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The tribal designs widely used and applied nowadays go back to the black, silhouette like and geometric tatau ornaments of the polynesians. It was also tribal tattoos the sailors brought home to Europe, from their first journeys to Tahiti, before the influences of the sailors with maritime designs, the today called traditional tattoos, replaced the native motives.

The release of Tattoo Time, a tattoo magazine founded in 1982 by the american innovator Don Ed Hardy and Leo Zulueta started an amazing tribal tattoo boom. The title of the first issue was "New Tribalism" and it features native tattoos from Samoa and Borneo. From there on the tattoo scene re-discovered tribal designs as a tattoo style. Not only that, the black and gently swinging style of tribal weakened the negative associations made with tattoos in the years before. Only after half a year the black designs were among the most popular motive choices and tribal is still one of the most popular tattoo styles today.

There are a lot of tattoo artists who refuse to tattoo simple tribal because of the widely spread believe a tribal is not very challenging for the artist. This is not true. Tribal patterns should always be applied correctly, along the musculature and single muscle parts of the body and should come across as a grown part of the body. The colouring should also be very even and this is not the easiest to do.