Subdomains or go with subfolders ?

Well, now I need to take huge decision for my new project, if I have to go with subdomains or with subfolders. Basically subfolders will be better for future brand name but I am planning to rank my pages with blackhat seo (I am very carefully with it) but it may happens that I will get penalized, so thats why I am thinking to switch to subdomains to avoid penalty.

So what would you choose ?
example.com/category/page --> better brand
== or ==
category.example.com/page --> avoiding future penalties

Thank you for your opinion

if you going to use black hat seo just go with subdomain. it will restrict your penalty to sub domain level only

Go with sub folder. If your site has a overall great backlink profile I don't think your rankings will suffer much with moderate black hat seo. Of course if you are planning on spamming 100k backlinks I probably go with sub domain.

Subdomain will be the best option for you to be safe.