Walls, phone booths, curbs, traffic signs—in cities around the world public surfaces are adorned with hand-painted or hand-crafted posters and stickers.Claudia Walde, aka Mad C and herself a graffiti artist, traveled the globe from Philadelphia to Prague, Barcelona to Berlin, to meet the great names in street art and to find the creative custodians of the new sticker cities. More than eighty artists are represented, with images chosen from over 7,000 examples. Mad C first covers the scene's history, including Shepard Fairey's Obey Giant propaganda campaign, Blek le Rat's stencil graffiti, and Revs's sensational sticker flood in New York City in the 1990s. Her documentation of the contemporary scene includes fascinating insights into the techniques used by today's artists: Swoon and her amazing cut-outs, Invader's ceramic mosaics, and Above's wooden arrows.

    It showcases the creativity that lies within this new and relatively unexplored form of contemporary Japanese art. Interviews with the artists, and the authors' own experiences in documenting the different aspects of this subculture, reveal an art-form at the cutting edge and often at odds with police and civic authorities. An accompanying DVD brings to life the imagery of the book and includes footage of graffiti being created. Set to a soundtrack by some of Japan's leading Trip-Hop artists, the viewer is fully immersed in the subculture that is Japanese graffiti.