Freehand spray painting takes time. A stencil takes seconds. When the work is going up on a wall you do not own, that difference decides what is possible.
Speed shapes the image
Cutting a design into card forces hard edges, flat colour and no gradients. Every element has to survive being reduced to a silhouette, which is why the images read so clearly at distance — and why they transfer so well onto fabric and canvas.
Repetition is the point
A stencil can be reused. The same rat, the same policeman, the same girl can appear in a dozen cities, and the repetition turns individual jokes into a recognisable vocabulary. That is how a piece of vandalism becomes a body of work.