---

“Advertising’s goal, of course, is to make you want something. To create desire. That begins by making you unhappy with what you currently have, or don’t have. Advertising widens the gap between what you have and what you want. Wanting to buy something, then, is a response to feelings of dissatisfaction, envy and craving. A perpetual state of conflict. ”

–—Jelly Helm

---

There are two problems with the relationship of graphic design to corporate America which started
to bother designers during the late 1990’s.

1. Our main industry goal as become to sell things that people don’t necessarily need (the gigantic over-production of things.)
2. Designers have become central to the branding process used to distinguish and sell these goods. Branding and advertising in general have taken over our culture.

---

“The point is that there are no ways for you to express yourself that the brand doesn’t own or control or want to own or control in an instant. That there is no space or event or experience that cannot be bought and made part of the brand message.”

–— Nick Compton in British style magazine ID

---

“The commodification of our dissent”

–— Thomas Frank

---

“They are buying your happiness—steal it back”

–—Situationist maxim

---

Adbusters began in 1989. It is a non-profit organization that describes itself as “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age.

One of the main goals of these graphic design activists is to show that there is more to graphic design than just selling things and promoting rampant consumerism. In the eyes of these activists, graphic designers are “image-makers for the democracies of false desire.”

---

“We need to create a new conceptual space that lies beyond “the destruction of direct experience by the simulacrum of institutional culture.”

—Jan van Toorn

---

Tags:activismAdBustersadvertisingconsumerismgraphic design activism