The archive · Public & Social · Product decision · 2022–2023
Twisted Flags' fading stickers turn Russian car decals into Ukrainian flags
As Russian drivers' car stickers became war propaganda in 2022, Twisted Flags made cheap-ink decals whose Russian flag fades into Ukraine's in the sun.
Twisted Flags
What it had to solve
Drivers in Russia are obsessed with car stickers, and after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, many cars in Russia turned into vehicles of Putin's propaganda. Twisted Flags set out to hijack that craze and flip its message.
How it works
Drivers in Russia are obsessed with car stickers, and when the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, many cars in Russia turned into vehicles of Putin's propaganda. Twisted Flags answered that craze with stickers of its own: decals that look like ordinary Russian-flag supporters' stickers but are printed to change sides.
The trick is the ink. Twisted Flags are printed with cheap ink that degrades in sunlight, so after a few weeks on a car the Russian flag turns into the Ukrainian one. Nothing has to be peeled off, painted over or explained — the same car simply ends up broadcasting the opposite message.
By design, the stickers transform the propaganda itself into pro-Ukraine messages: cars that once declared support for the war carry the Ukrainian flag into the same streets. The idea is preserved in D&AD's awards archive as an example of making a symbol argue against itself.
Why it lands
- It weaponises the enemy's own craze: no billboard or broadcast is needed, just the car stickers Russians already love.
- The sun does the work invisibly, so the change feels like the message corrected itself rather than a confrontation.
- Cheap, light-sensitive ink keeps the cost near zero, so the stickers can spread through a car culture organically.
- Every faded decal is a repeated public argument: the longer it sits, the more clearly it states the opposite.
What it did
A few weeks in the sun turned car decals into pro-Ukraine messages, creating an entirely different meaning from the one originally printed — and the work is preserved in D&AD's awards archive.
What you can take
Attack propaganda through its materials, not its arguments: make the symbol itself decay into the opposing message, so time and sunlight do the changing in public.
Since then
Twisted Flags was released in 2022 and is preserved in D&AD's awards archive, with the project's leads credited on the archive page. No sales or reach figures are recorded there, and none are claimed here — the point of the work is the mechanism itself: a cheap printed symbol that quietly argues the opposite case in public.
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