Are You Generic?
Piracy, subversion, guerrilla activism, parody, and liberation! What more could you ask of designers? The artist collective Are You Generic aspires to meet those goals, fusing the cry of protest with aesthetic graphic design and replacing the major brands with rallying statements of assertion.
At the center of their bullseye are unethical corporations, censorship, the slanted media, hypocrisy, excessive advertising, and plain stupidity. With a revolving exhibition of socially charged pieces, they’re an organization that:
instigates, that critiques our social environment and the unacceptable things we have grown to accept, that denies the convenient and replaces it with the conscientious, and that fights to reclaim our individuality and regain our space and voices from Big Business.
Are You Generic’s latest action is the Confessions of A Generic Magazine campaign, a DIY culture jamming strategy targeting ad-supported magazines. Jammers can download a PDF with the text below, to print and place in the magazines they love to hate. The text reads:
We loaded this issue with more advertising than content. The content we did publish was edited, censored and manipulated to please our advertisers or as lame filler between the product pushing ads. We got paid quite handsomely to produce this issue and are glad you will pay to read what we already got paid to print. Are You Generic?
In addition to their campaigns, Are You Generic offers an international community of street artists, and a catalog of their work available for purchase.
Photo credits Are You Generic?
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