

No, this is not an original Stussy Logo I personally get asked this a lot, but people have been drawing this S long before Stussy was established. "That 'S' Thing Everyone Drew in School, What Is It?". The double 'S' markings on the center piece resemble other marks and gestures found in Basquiat's paintings from this time While it became less and less a part of Basquiat's art production, there are continued references to graffiti style in his paintings and works on paper, such as the 'S' symbol. ^ "Local Investigates: The Mysterious S Symbol"."Here's The Story Behind That Cool 'S' Thing You Used To Draw In Class". ^ "Alamy stock image of Hassan Mosque".Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine ^ a b c d Wångstedt, David (August 10, 2019)."This Guy Spent Five Years Researching The Origins Of The 'Universal S' ". ^ a b Shepherd, Rebecca (August 14, 2019).
#GRAFFITI M HOW TO#
Frederick taught geometry at Princeton University in New Jersey, where he could have shown students how to draw the S symmetrically. Swedish YouTuber David Wångstedt, better known online as LEMMiNO, studied the topic for five years and attempted to find the origin of the Cool S, and he concluded that the 1890 book Mechanical Graphics, which was written by professor Frederick Newton Willson, could most likely be the origin. However, accounts of attribution to Stussy precede the video by at least 20 years. A possible origin for this is that in 2010 the company uploaded a video to Vimeo and later to YouTube in which one of Jon Naar's 1973 photographs of the symbol can be seen. Although frequently referred to as the Stüssy S, Emmy Coats (who has worked alongside Shawn Stussy since 1985) has stated that it was never a symbol of the Californian surf company. The name "Superman S" comes from a belief that it was a symbol for Superman, whose costume features a stylized S in a diamond shape, but that shape is quite different.

Jean-Michel Basquiat's artworks occasionally had the symbol hidden somewhere, and in the one titled Olive Oil from 1982 it is labelled as the "classic S of graff". Also in 1973, Jon Naar's famous photographs of graffiti in New York featured the symbol many times, here identical to its modern form. As the photo was taken in 1973, the S itself could date back to the 1960s, making it the earliest photographic evidence of the symbol. In one of them, a very faded Cool S can be seen graffitied on a pavement. In the 1970s, photographer Howard Gribble took many photos of Los Angeles, many of which feature the number 8 in a similar style to the Cool S. As illustrated, a common way to draw the shape begins with two sets of three parallel, vertical lines, one above the other. The Cool S has no reflection symmetry, but has 2-fold rotational symmetry. The tails (pointy ends) of the S appear to link underneath so that it loops around on itself in the same way as the infinity symbol does. It has also been compared to the infinity symbol. The Cool S consists of 14 line segments, forming a stylized, pointed S-shape. It is also visually similar to the ancient Latvian "Zalkša zīme" symbol and the Dacian "Carligul Ciobanului" symbol.

A similar pattern can be seen in 14th-century tilework at the central courtyard of the Sultan Hassan Mosque in Cairo, as well as in the background of the 1533 painting " The Ambassadors" by Hans Holbein.

This symbol and other nearly-identical S-shaped motifs have appeared for at least hundreds of years. clothing brand Stüssy nor to the character Superman, though Stüssy did conduct an interview in 2010 with Jon Naar, a pioneer graffiti photographer with many works including this S, dating back to the 1970s. Contrary to popular belief, the symbol has ties to neither the U.S. The exact origin of the Cool S is unknown, but it may have originated from geometry textbooks and has appeared around the early 1970s as a part of graffiti culture. The Cool S, also known as the Stussy S, Super S, Superman S, Universal S, Pointy S, Middle School S, Graffiti S, and by many other names, is a graffiti sign in popular culture that is typically doodled on children's notebooks or graffitied on walls. A drawing of the Cool S and the corresponding four-step guide to drawing one
