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06.10.04 Subvertise.org, an archive of subversive ads.
The term 'subvertising' merges the words 'subvert' and 'advertising', that is, it's the act of subverting through the advertising medium. The fusion of these two concepts is a neologism expressing the act of redesigning logos and advertising campaigns which have infested the minds of millions of consumers, with the goal of making something similar but with a radically different meaning. Design, as scientifically applied by marketers, is turned against them, with a practice that, if applied enough, irreversibly garbles the message, ridiculizing the original author. Subvertise.org is a big online archive of this still young discipline, and classifies a few hundreds initiatives which mix radical politics and communication. The contents are subdivided into anti-copyright and copyleft. Many of the works were already published on AdBuster, a magazine dedicated to this kind of practices, whose cultural resistance has pervaded many protest movements and is one of the most effective (and amusing) forms of activism today.