Every craft has language, and graffiti's is unusually precise — terms that distinguish a two-minute tag from a two-week production, or an authorized wall from a stolen one. Guides in Comuna 13 use this vocabulary constantly, and half the questions visitors ask ("is this legal?", "why is that one so simple?", "who are all these names?") are answered by it. Here's the working glossary, organized from the fastest marks to the biggest walls.
The Forms, Smallest to Largest
Tag — a stylized signature, executed in seconds. The atomic unit of graffiti and its oldest form. Tags read as scribble to outsiders and as handwriting to insiders: practitioners recognize each other's hands the way you recognize a friend's signature.
Throw-up (or "throwie") — the tag's bigger sibling: bubble letters, usually two colors (fill plus outline), made in a couple of minutes. Built for speed and repetition.
Piece — short for masterpiece. A full multi-color letter work with dimension, effects, and style, taking hours. This is where graffiti becomes unmistakably skilled labor even to the uninitiated.
Character — a figurative image (a face, an animal, a body) rather than letters. Much of what makes Comuna 13 photogenic is character work, often at mural scale.
Mural — a large planned wall, typically authorized, often narrative. In Comuna 13 the line between "graffiti piece" and "mural" is where the neighborhood's two lineages — hip-hop graffiti and Latin American muralism — meet and blur.
Production — a coordinated multi-artist wall: several writers and artists composing one continuous surface, usually with a shared theme or background. Many of Comuna 13's landmark walls are productions, and reading them means spotting where one artist's section hands off to the next.
The Practice
Writer — what graffiti practitioners traditionally call themselves; the culture's own word, predating "street artist."
Crew — a collective of writers/artists working together under a shared name. Crews are the social structure of graffiti worldwide, and collectives are central to how Comuna 13's art scene organizes labor, mentorship, and big walls. (Our collectives profile goes deeper.)
Getting up — building visibility through volume and placement of your work. The traditional metric of graffiti reputation.
Bombing — a concentrated session of fast, unauthorized work (tags and throw-ups). Contrast with…
Permission wall / legal wall — a surface where painting is authorized by the owner or community. The overwhelming majority of what tour routes show in Comuna 13 lives on the permission side — which is precisely part of the neighborhood's story: the negotiated legitimacy of its art. (See the legalization story.)
The Lifecycle
Buff — the erasure of graffiti, whether by authorities, owners, or weather-and-repaint cycles. "Getting buffed" is the fate of most graffiti everywhere, which shapes the culture's relationship to impermanence.
Going over — painting on top of someone else's work. Governed by unwritten hierarchy: covering a piece with a tag is a serious violation of the culture's etiquette; replacing a faded piece with a stronger one, often acceptable, especially with consent. On walls as contested and refreshed as Comuna 13's, going-over norms are constantly in negotiation.
Restoration / refresh — repainting a fading work, sometimes by the original artist, to extend its life. Comuna 13's most significant memory-walls get maintained this way, which is itself remarkable: graffiti culture mostly accepts decay, but walls that carry community memory get treated more like monuments. (More in restoration and preservation.)
Style Terms Worth Knowing
Wildstyle — densely interlocked, arrow-laden lettering, often illegible to outsiders by design. Legibility isn't the point; complexity is the flex.
Fill / outline / 3D / force field — the anatomical parts of a piece: interior color, containing line, dimensional shadow, and the glow or energy effect surrounding it.
Fade — a blended color transition, the fundamental aerosol skill. Watch for fades inside faces on the big character walls; smooth skin-tone fades at scale are hard-won craft.
Cutting — re-spraying a crisp edge over an area to sharpen it. Clean cuts are how pieces look "printed."
Halo / overspray — the soft mist beyond an intended line. Controlled, it's a glow effect; uncontrolled, it's the mark of a rushed or inexperienced hand.
Terms With Local Weight
A few concepts carry more meaning in Comuna 13 than the global glossary suggests. Memory wall isn't a formal graffiti term, but it's the useful name for the works whose primary function is commemoration — of Operation Orión, of the disappeared, of the neighborhood's dead — and whose preservation norms differ from ordinary pieces. Galería a cielo abierto ("open-sky gallery") is how the mural corridors get described locally — a framing that positions the walls as curated public collection rather than accumulated graffiti, with everything that implies about maintenance, authorization, and tourism. And the elements refers to hip-hop's four disciplines — MCing, DJing, breaking, and graffiti — a framing that matters here because Comuna 13's art scene grew inside its hip-hop movement, not parallel to it (see the hip-hop–graffiti connection).
FAQ
Is it "graffiti" or "street art"?
Depends who you ask — the terms carry politics. "Graffiti" traditionally centers letters, crews, and the unauthorized tradition; "street art" is broader and more institution-friendly. Comuna 13 contains both, made by people who often reject the distinction. This site uses both without apology.
Are the tags I see vandalism of the murals?
Usually the tags and the murals are simply different registers coexisting, as they do in every graffiti city. A tag directly over a significant piece would violate the culture's own norms — and that's rare on the maintained walls.
How do I identify a specific artist's work?
Look for signatures within pieces (artists sign much like painters), recurring characters or motifs, and ask guides — attribution is oral culture here. Our artist profiles cover several of the scene's established names.