Graffiti Blackbooks - Bates

This one’s straight from the source. Graffiti Blackbooks – Bates cracks open decades of sketching from one of Scandinavia’s most respected style writers. If you care about letters, flow, and real style development, this book hits hard right away.

Bates has been active since the early days and never fell off. What you get here isn’t polished promo sketches — it’s raw blackbook pages. Paint-stained paper, quick notes, folded corners, half-finished ideas, corrections, experiments. This is the stuff that usually stays hidden in a bag or on a desk, not something you see printed clean.

Some spreads place the sketch next to the finished wall piece, which is gold if you’re trying to understand how a style moves from paper to concrete. You can actually follow how letters evolve, how structure tightens up, how details change once it hits scale. That alone makes this book a serious study tool for writers.

Bates also adds his own reflections throughout the book, talking about sketching, letters, and why paper is still the foundation of stylewriting. No hype, just experience.

208 pages, A4 size, softcover, English text. Releasing December 2025. If you’re into blackbooks, letter history, or learning how real style gets built over time, this one belongs on your shelf.