What 10FOOT Knows About Being Seen

You may not know who 10FOOT is.

You almost certainly know his name.

That is his achievement.

Look from a London train window. Peer at the brickwork behind a station. Glance at a bridge, rooftop, trackside wall or one of those mysterious pieces of railway architecture whose official purpose appears to be somewhere for pigeons to hold meetings.

10FOOT.

Again.

10FOOT.

And, several miles later:

10FOOT.

The Financial Times has described the anonymous writer as one of London's most prolific graffiti figures. His tag has become so ubiquitous that knowing nothing about graffiti is no guarantee that you haven't encountered him.

He reportedly began writing graffiti at twelve. More than a decade of relentless repetition later, those six characters have become an unofficial part of London's visual vocabulary.

Which raises an oddly useful question.

The Big Idea

How many times must somebody encounter something before it becomes part of their mental landscape?

10FOOT is interesting because the tag itself is almost aggressively uncomplicated.

This isn't the ornate mural you photograph for Instagram. There is no charming rat holding a placard. No poignant child releasing a balloon. No Sotheby's auction.

It is a name.

Repeated.

And repeated.

And repeated.

There is an obvious complication here. Graffiti placed on property without permission is still somebody putting something on somebody else's property without permission. Cleaning it costs money. Romanticising that fact doesn't make the bill disappear.

But you don't have to approve of graffiti to notice what graffiti understands exceptionally well:

visibility compounds.

We tend to imagine that reputation comes from doing something extraordinary.

Usually it doesn't.

It comes from being associated with something consistently.

The colleague who always asks the surprisingly good question.

The manager who remembers people's names.

The person who actually reads the attachment.

The person who says, "I'll sort that," and—rather unsettlingly—sorts it.

Or, less happily, the person whose arrival causes four people simultaneously to minimise Teams.

Reputation is cumulative.

10FOOT has effectively conducted a vast uncontrolled experiment in this principle across London.

The individual mark is forgettable.

The thousandth isn't.

Your Office Has Walls Too

Most of us spend quite a lot of professional energy wondering how to be noticed.

LinkedIn posts. Networking events. Personal brands. Carefully composed biographies announcing that we are passionate about stakeholder engagement.

10FOOT suggests another possibility.

Don't keep announcing the reputation you would like.

Keep doing the thing you would like to be known for.

Reliability becomes visible through repeated reliability.

Kindness becomes visible through repeated kindness.

Good judgement becomes visible through repeated good judgement.

And unfortunately, being a monumental pain in the arse works on exactly the same principle.

You are already leaving a tag.

The question is what it says.