The rise of the Internet sticker - 'Visual narcotics'

You've seen it, perhaps: an image of what Che Guevara and Darth Vader's love child might resemble.

It was created by Derek Fridman and Heather Alexander of urbanmedium.com,

the first website to enable easy home production of stickers.

Many sticker artists trace the origins of the current movement to Shepard Fairey, who created a sticker of Andre the Giant, the professional wrestling star, in the early 1990s and posted it at the website obeygiant.

Soon he was shipping the stickers to people all over the world.

Now there're tons of "culture jammers": bomit, woostercollective, 20mg, and streetstickers are just a few of the many out there.

[via Samantha Storey in today's New York Times]