Culture Jamming

According to urbandictionary.com "Culture jamming, is the act of using existing media such as billboards, bus-ads, posters, and other ads to comment on those very media themselves or on society in general, using the original medium's communication method. It is based on the idea that advertising is little more than propaganda for established interests, and that there is little escape from this propaganda in industrialized nations. Culture jamming differs from artistic appropriation (which is done for art's sake), and from vandalism where destruction or defacement is the primary goal." Let's take a moment to think where we have seen this recently.

Coat of Arms

The Coat of Arms is something that many of us would describe as historic. It was developed originally in the mid-12th century as armorial bearing of feudal lord and knights as a method to determine ally from enemy.

There was no universal rules governing them, but they managed to stay consistent throughout Europe in the middle ages. 

I'm going to blame peer-pressure.

Historic or not, however, this practice is far from dead.

Ideograms. We've gotten better at them.

So we understand an ideogram as a character or symbol that represents a complete idea. We, as humans, have been using them for thousands of years. Sometimes, in history, a combination of many ideograms are required to tell a story. Sometimes, it's just not very easy to interpret just what the ancient peoples of this earth had to say.

we think it's agricultural...

But we've had lots of practice. Many years of refining our technique has given us the ability to apply one basic symbol combination and provide us complex ideas and/or instructions.

Smoke in front of this sign and take a cell phone picture to become cool.

Do not wrestle with; your kung-fu is not yet strong.

Then again, maybe is hasn't...

Logo or Logotype? Get your terminology correct.

          Logotype refers to a symbol built 


entirely or near-entirely from typography.


Examples include Google, Yahoo!, and


Coca-cola:

       Logo refers, more or less, to symbols. They are nearly an interchangable 


term. It may include type, but is largely a symbol, or a symbol combined with 


typography. Examples include Pepsi, Logitech, and Starbucks: