Beaker street
Who are the Shoreditch plastic cup letterers, and what do they want?

Last night it said ‘KAJAL’. The other night it said ‘DRUNK MAN’, and before that it was ‘SPUNK MAN’ (below). The tools of this form of public lettering are nothing more than a supply of stacking plastic cups (above), and an expanse of wire fencing into which you can push them. 

A few weeks ago, we had this more elaborate arrangement of arrows (reminiscent of Above) and letters (and taken by a better photographer).

. . . not to mention all the activity in the local basketball railings in Brick Lane. In one case a couple seem to be having some sort of ‘cup art’ conversation.

First the railings displayed the words ‘Jay love Anwar forever’ . . .

. . . only to be changed the next day to ‘you will always be my baby Jay.’

. . . and more arrows, above them only sky . . .

But who’s doing it? Is it ‘Kajal’, or is s/he merely the object of the letterer’s affections. Is there any connection to Big Active, who created some early examples of ‘cup art’ for Vega4’s Traffic Jam? I think we should be told. If you see (and snap) more examples, send us a link to your pictures on Flickr.

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Comments 3

Comments 3 | Add your own

  1. September 18th, 2008 at 4:58 pm | by The incredible cup typographers of Shoreditch « optimist prime

    [...] the vision faded from my mind, but Eye magazine has just blogged about it on their site - with [...]

  2. September 25th, 2008 at 11:03 pm | by Paul

    Isn’t it Ben Eine? He talks about the ‘Monster’ one that was on Clerkenwell Road here http://swindlemagazine.com/issue16/eine/

  3. May 13th, 2009 at 3:59 pm | by JLW

    take a look at all this!

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