Designing a personal narrative through collaged mass-market images: traditional collage and digital collage

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Content Copyright 2021 Yuqi Zhang
Designing a Personal Narrative Through Collaged Mass-market Images
Traditional Collage and Digital Collage
by
Yuqi Zhang
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE
USC ROSKI SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS DESIGN
DEC EMBER 2021

ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iii
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1
Chapter 1: Visual Language and Personal Narrative .......................................................................3
Visual Languages ...................................................................................................3
Personal Narrative ..................................................................................................4
Collage Languages .................................................................................................5
Chapter 2: Collage in Modernism Art .............................................................................................7
Artists and Designers .............................................................................................7
History in the West ............................................................................................7
Bapo ..................................................................................................................9
Collage Art in China Compared to Euro-US ......................................................12
Collage in Different Contemporary Art Forms ....................................................12
Contemporary Examples in Performance art ..................................................12
Contemporary Examples in Photography .......................................................14
Chapter 3: Collage in the Digital age .............................................................................................17
The Origin and Development of Internet Collage Design ...................................17
Digital Collage in Contemporary Design .............................................................18
Examples of Artists and Designers ......................................................................20
Chapter 4: My Practice .................................................................................................................22
Projects .................................................................................................................22
Work of Art in Professional Work .......................................................................22
Work of Art in Contemporary Design ..................................................................27
How I Use Collage ...............................................................................................33
Video Collage .......................................................................................................34
Narrative and Self-Identity ...................................................................................37
Chapter 5: Conclusion .................................................................................................................41
Recap ....................................................................................................................41
Bibliography .................................................................................................................................42

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Abstract
My thesis project explores the use of collaged pre-existing found images and digital
media to create a personal narrative. Through the use of digital image and text I design
narratives about my upbringing and personal experiences. Advertising and popular culture often
reflect personal narratives and design language can be manipulated to express and produce
personal feeling. Through my research and work, I have found that images and videos are often
collaged as a way to deliver information or message. I want to take these messages and make
them tell my story and re-manipulate them to reflect my personal narrative.
With the development of the internet, there are many images and videos available to
everyone. Artists and designers absorb sources and material from existing art works and redefine
them frequently. Rather than copying, I consider my practice collage. I do not use whole images
from other works. Instead, I recreate and recycle existing messages to reflect popular culture and
my own stories in a different way.
My thesis will discuss how the collage is presented through narrative in different forms,
my research will discuss collage in design, photography, and performance art. The cultural
difference between Asia and USA in contemporary collage design will also be examined.
Finally, I plan to tell my personal story through the application of digital collage, largely
acquired through mass marketing imagery.

1
Introduction
Collage is from the French word “coller”, which means “to glue” or “to stick together”.
1

Collage is a traditional design method. It has a long history and plays an important role in the
development of human art and design. In Western cultures, the art of collage appeared not until
after 1900 when modernist art took the stage. “Collage” and “combine” the fragments of mass
images to achieve visual dislocation. It was originally initiated by Cubist artists Braque and
Picasso. Although Braque was the first to propose the concept of collage, Picasso soon applied it to
the field of painting.
Nowadays, with the development of technology and the advent of computers, the previous
complicated cut-and-paste process can be completed on the keyboard. Digital collage has become a
new art form, and various forms of new media collage art spread all over the Internet. Designers
use computer software to create the perfect collage that reflect their world view. Collage has
become more of a means to satisfy the creative desire of modern people and breakthrough their
own rational restrictions.
In today’s era of rapid Internet development, collage has attracted the favor of visual
designers with its unique creative method, and at the same time, it has gained unprecedented
vitality. In our lives, Pictures Made Through collage design are ubiquitous. Collage design is the
simplest and most effective means for netizens to express their own creativity. It is also because of
this that a large number of collage designs are produced, which are derived in the Internet age.
Many new features have been added.

1 Enslen Denise. "Origin of the term "collage". Archived from the original on April 12, 2012.

2
Collage is the most common artistic technique in my artworks. Nowadays, there are many different
forms of collage, those with real objects such as photographic image, those with images such as
illustrative image, and those with a combination of photography and illustration. I frequently
incorporate digital collage in my design. I collage photographic images with the use of Photoshop
and combine video fragments using Adobe Premier. These techniques allow me to create my own
distinct imagery and build my narrative."

3
Chapter 1: Visual Language and Personal Narrative
1.1 Visual Languages
Language, which differentiates us from animals and other life forms, is the most remarkable
way in which humans can communicate. My purpose within this chapter is to emphasize the idea
that visual language plays a decisive role in the entire process of creating, especially in the latest
guise this discipline has taken to reach audiences: sending messages.
A Language is a communication tool for people. Words are the bridge between writers and
readers. Visual language is an important channel for communicating with users for designers,
including fonts, colors, shapes, and visual elements. Effective design language can simplify
communication. Without a unified communication tool, not only will the user experience become
chaotic, but the final design will also be unsatisfactory. Whether you are helping to launch a new
business from scratch, or making incremental changes to an existing product, or something in
between, any design task you undertake must serve a goal. It’s your job to find out what those
goals are.
2

For designers, mastering the visual language is a necessary lesson. The design field has a
wide range of specializations, and there is some variability in the communication of visual
language, which can be seen in digital media, user interface design, visual identification system and
industrial design.
Take “Apple” for example, its iconic logo, clean UI interface, silky aluminum body, and
highly detailed craftsmanship. All these languages are expressed through their different series of
products. Although the functions are not the same, the application scenarios are different, but their

2 Monteiro, Mike. Design Is a Job. 1st edition. New York, New York: Book Apart, 2012.

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visual language tells us, “We are all Designed by Apple. We speak in Apple’s design language.”
By mastering this language, we can create products that look like Apple’s designs. Similarly, the
most obvious example of how visual language is successfully communicated to users is the
dazzling variety of car brands we see on the road. When different cars drive past us, many car
lovers can talk about the brand or even the series model of the car without looking at the badge. We
can see that the product design of these brands is very successful in the unity and recognition of the
visual language. As for Coca-Cola, which we often drink, its classic bottle design has maintained
the classic core design language in its 100-year history: the S-shaped curve.
Conclusively, as far as marketing is concerned, as a communication tool, visual language
supports everything as the main engine that persuades customers and creates and connects them to
a product or idea.

1.2 Personal Narrative
The author displays their emotions and thoughts in most literary works. They contain their
own narratives. “Noun,” “verb,” and "adjective" are the three most important lexical categories in a
narrative essay." The logic of a story combines all these lexical categories. In other words, a
literary work's "story" and "logic" are the essential parts in it. The core of the design is formed by
narrative and logic. Without a design narrative, all forms of design are lifeless.
Design works typically need topics and stories. Therefore, the support of conceptual ideas
and concepts in design works is “narrative” the design process is a systematic, logical method of
thinking; first, the problem needs to be discovered and defined. This stage corresponds to literary
“nouns,” which are a critical beginning of the design thinking process, and the nouns are the

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definition of the design of every important piece after the arrangement and combination of
abstraction of thinking, which is what we designers commonly call “design positioning.”
For example, our past design positioning is “people-oriented”, then our design logic is
focused on human’s needs to think and produce; if the design positioning is ecological balance,
then we will sacrifice some people’s needs to achieve the design logic of more long-term benefits
for people.
The previous section mentioned how brands control the uniqueness and unity of their visual
language, which has a strong sense of guidance for my creation. In my work, each project has a
different direction but always a same visual language that marks it as my own portfolio. For me,
the narrative is the most important thing in my design. I want my designs to express my attitude
towards nature and life. I believe collage is a creative tool that can powerfully and effectively
convey my narrative through my visual language to the audience and user.

1.3 Collage Languages
Modernism has its own visual language and artistic style. The essence of Modernism is its
criticality. Collage is one of the essential artistic languages and techniques adopted by Modernism.
Collage embodies the criticism and breakthrough of Modernism to Classicism. Classicism values
integrity the most, and what collage breaks is precisely integrity. This is also the reason why
collage has not only achieved significant results in Modernism but also continued in postmodern
art and design.
With the development of the internet, there are many images and videos available to
everyone online. Through my research and work in Entertainment, I have found that images are
often collaged as a way to deliver information or message. Collage puts different styles, different

6
ages, different pictures together, which can more effectively express the artist's theme and produce
more dramatic visual effects. Its direct expression is one of the most commonly used techniques in
graphic design.

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Chapter 2: Collage in Modernism Art
2.1 Artists and Designers
The term collage appeared in the period of Cubism and became complete(expanded) in the
period of Pop Art. Its connotation has undergone nearly half a century of evolution, and gradually
enriched the visual arts with the continuous expansion of the boundaries of painting. US art critic
Clement Greenberg defined it as follows:
Collage was a major turning point in the evolution of Cubism, and therefore a
major turning point in the whole evolution of modernist art in this century.
Who invented collage--Braque or Picasso--and when is still not settled. Both
artists left most of the work they did between I907 and 1914 undated as well as
unsigned.
3

2.1.1 History in the West
Via the assemblage of different objects and images, collage interrogates the fundamental
concept of what it is to create art, whilst offering a prismatic reflection of the social change and
upheaval of the twentieth century
4
. Picasso is widely considered as one of the greatest artists of the
20th century. His work ranges from painting to sculpture. As one of the founders of Cubism,
Picasso is also considered to be the pioneer of the collage art. His 1912 work "Still Life with Chair
Caning" is considered to be the first true collage in art history. Georges Braque, a founder of
Cubism, also produced several collages in his artworks.
Marcel Duchamp was a French American painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer. He was
a pioneer of conceptual art in the twentieth century who has an important influence on Western art.

3 Greenberg: Collage. Retrieved July 20, 2010. Sharecom.Ca. http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/collage.html.
4 "Top 10 Collage Artists: Hannah Höch To Man Ray". 2020. Another. https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/3318/top-10-
collage-artists-hannah-hoch-to-man-ray.

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Before World War II, he was also a representative and founder of Dadaism and Cubism. In 1919,
he used a pencil to create a mustache for the ‘Mona Lisa’ by Leonardo da Vinci on a postcard, and
the resulting modified postcard, called L.H.O.O.Q. became a masterpiece in the history of Western
art.“L.H.O.O.Q. is one of what Duchamp referred to as readymades, or more specifically a
rectified ready-made.
5
Duchamp gave the translation of the title—L.H.O.O.Q.; when the letters are
read in French, they sound like the French phrase for "there is fire down below” in a late interview.
In fact, in Duchamp!s words, he used a collage to separate his creations from Leonardo!s original
work in a sense, but in the imagery, they maintain a sense of inner connection, it only looks like
other works in deep meaning.
Hannah Höch was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of
the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage
6
. Höch began to create
her first collage works, which were photomontages in 1918, and she became famous for it later.
Dadaists questioned traditional art materials. In addition to using font elements, they also
incorporated photos into their works. Hannah Höch's montages represent a feminine interpretation
of Dadaism. During her art education, Höch has already begun to study collage methods. The core
themes of her collage works are often to show the roles of urban construction and gender difference
in society that prevailed at that time.
Raoul Hausman is a genius and idealist of the pioneer "anti-art" movement and a Dadaist in
the early 20th century. He created a device called the Optophone, transforming kaleidoscopic forms
into music. Hausmann's work includes photographs, raywords and pictograms, as well as sound

5 "L.H.O.O.Q. Or La Joconde » Norton Simon Museum". 1964. Nortonsimon.Org.
https://www.nortonsimon.org/art/detail/P.1969.094.
6 Weidemann, Christiane., Petra. Larass, and Melanie Klier. 50 Women Artists You Should Know Munich ;: Prestel, 2008.

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poetry. For Hausmann, the scattered and complex photomontage and his own collage language
together may alter human consciousness and weaken the power of nationalism. Despite a mix of
materials of different shapes and sizes, traces of his traditional artistic training are reflected in his
penchant for drawing montages.

2.1.2 Bapo
Developed during the mid-19th century in China, the Bapo (or “eight brokens”) painting
genre combines ingeniously realistic depictions of antique documents, such as calligraphies,
rubbings, paintings and pages from old books, sometimes alongside everyday contemporary
ephemera, including advertisements, receipts and postmarked envelopes
7
. The resulting overlap
which seemed haphazard, contains reflections about the decadence of cultural traditions or wishes
for good fortune.
At present, the situation of Bapo painting is gaining popularity again in academia, art and
collection. In the academic field, according to the research of Nancy Berliner, we know that the
existing Bapo paintings can be traced back to the middle of the 19th century. But as the local
source of Bapo paintings, as early as the 8th century, Chinese people liked to place Artworks in
their rooms and hang multiple paintings on the same wall; In the 17th century, with the wealthy
people’s habit of showing off their collections, the behavior of hanging works at home was revived.
Another source was from the tradition of reproducing ability in the calligraphy. In the Qing
Dynasty, when a large number of inscriptions were unearthed, scholars’ research, copying and

7 Berliner, Nancy. The 8 Brokens : Chinese Bapo Painting First edition. Boston: MFA Publications, 2018.

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translation on ancient calligraphy became more popular, which was also the element that often
appeared in Bapo paintings.
Similar to this, ancient Chinese art attaches great importance to delicate and subtle visual
experience. With the popularity of figurative painting in the Qing Dynasty, Bapo painting came
into life around the 19th century. This type of art is compatible with a variety of local visual and
cultural traditions, including traditional Chinese landscape paintings and calligraphy, showed
innovative modernity.
This kind of Bapo, which can be called the “Chinese collage”, is often stacked in a
disorderly manner by the creators to present the intriguing and fragmented ancient cultural relics.
Among these “broken”, there are worm-eaten bookmarks, broken pages, burnt paintings, residual
signatures, and torn letterheads.
Nowadays, the collage art form is widely used in China, from traditional painting to
photography, sculpture, architecture, literature, drama, film, and television. Collage perfectly
combines its own unique style with each field, and it is increasingly developed. But based on the
current research, China’s research understanding on collage is still limited, there are fewer
reference books compared to other fields, and many academic papers have similar views, so more
in-depth research needs to be done.

2.2 Collage Art in China Compared to Euro-US
In the West, there is a tradition of “trompe” (fooling the eyes), while the Chinese Bapo
paintings are rooted in China’s own painting tradition.

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Chinese eight brokens, which was popular in the late Qing Dynasty until the Republic of
China (late 19C to early 20C), and Western collage in the twentieth century are two independent art
forms. They originated in the Chinese and Western environments respectively, with no relationship
and no connection in time and space. It can be said they are two isolated art forms. They were
produced by their respective times and culture, but they are amazingly similar and have in common
– “Collage”.
Though it is the same “collage”, Western Collage shows a kind of “rebellion”, not only in
the concept of expression but also in the expression of materials. Due to the different definitions
and understanding of art by Cubism, Dada, Surrealism, it shows different artistic effects, either
witty and humorous, or deviant, or popular and commercial. The collage combines various
materials during the creating in artwork. Whether it is the “division” of the subject or the “broken”
of the subject, Western collage painting is a complete “collage of art”.
The Chinese Bapo was based on the traditional brush tool of Chinese painting which
originated from the traditional Chinese culture. Chinese respect for pens and paper, so even if the
objects are piles of miscellaneous sundries, the expression of the final art is a kind of harmony and
elegance, The painting of Bapo seems like a collage of different pieces, but everything is hand
painted, so this is why I call it “painted collage”.
Chinese Bapo painting and Western collage are very similar in form, but in fact, they
developed independently. The research Nancy Berliner who is a curator of Chinese art at the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, denied the direct connection between them. The Bapo painting looks
like a collage of different fragments, but it’s all hand-painted, which is also the difference between
it and Western collage.

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2.3 Collage in Different Contemporary Art Forms
2.3.1 Contemporary Examples in Performance art
In the history of the development of art, collage has become an indispensable element in the
development of not only painting art but, I argue, also in performance art. In her article “Collage: A
Paradigm for Performance Studies,” Amy Kilgard thus argues: "‘collage' is an umbrella term to
mean the practice of creating work from some combination of sources/texts/movements/bits. As a
paradigm for performance studies, collage begins with the idea that all performance is intertextual.”
8
With the development of the internet, there are many images and videos available to everyone
online. Artists and designers absorb source and material from existing art works and redefine them
all the time
Amy Kilgard’s thought is consonant with contemporary literary and performance theories
growing from the work of Roland Barthes and, earlier, Mikhail Bakhtin, among many others.
Beyond intertextuality, however, collage offers additional insights into performance studies
practices.
In James Harding’s 2010 book, Cutting Performance: Collage Events, Feminist Artists, and
the American Avant-Garde, the author focuses on the performances of five women artists and
writers (Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Gertrude Stein, Yoko Ono, Carolee Schneemann, and
Valerie Solanas) whose performance aesthetics made use of collage techniques. One of the basic
projects of this book is to explore the performative dimensions of collage aesthetics

8 Amy K. Kilgard. Collage: A Paradigm for Performance Studies. Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies Vol. 5, No. 3
(2009).

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Harding uses the examples of The Mother of Us All, which is a two-act opera composed
by Virgil Thomson to a libretto by Gertrude Stein. Harding defines its “implicit embrace of collage
and thus on how the aesthetics of collage reconfigure the ways in which we conceptualize and
know history.”
9

Harding notes that Stein combined historical events with fiction, and mixed historical
characters and fictional characters in the script at the same time. Reality, history, and fictional
events are mixed together, and there are no more boundaries. "Art conversation" and "historical
conversation" change scenes alternately, the continuity between the performance is often
interrupted, and the dramatic time presents a thematic structure. The performance deviates from the
conventional model and eliminates some of the plot and conflict in the opera so that the
performance language replaces the indispensable functions in the traditional performance language,
The audience's attention is drawn to the inner rhythm and rhythm related to language.
This opera is a tribute to main character Susan B. Anthony, who devoted her life to the
struggle for women to obtain the right to vote. It is also a memorial to Stein, who devoted her
whole life to the innovation and change of the literary traditions. Realizing her pursuit of the ideal
drama form, Stein's drama fully demonstrated the artistic characteristics of modernism. As Harding
notes, “the aesthetics of collage play a pivotal role, bridging the gap between American political
history and the performative history of the American avant-garde.”
10

9 Harding, James M., and James M Harding. Cutting Performances: Collage Events, Feminist Artists, and the American Avant-
Garde. Cutting Performances. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012.
10 Harding, James M., and James M Harding. Cutting Performances: Collage Events, Feminist Artists, and the American Avant-
Garde. Cutting Performances. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012.

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2.3.2 Contemporary Examples in Photography
Photographers can work with collage to create experimental images as well as
juxtapositions that cannot be seen through the camera lens alone. This practice has expanded our
view of photography and its importance within modern art. Contemporary photography is
presented in the open context of contemporary art, and it is the inevitable result of photography's
own development. In today’s ever-changing art forms, the inclusiveness, openness, and diversity of
the times have made people’s aesthetic visual experience more and more abundant.
Collage takes advantage of the abundance of images provided by photo-reprographic
technologies such as using existing magazine images and at the same time photography through
things like double exposure what Barthes calls “connotation procedures”
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—adopted collage as a
technique both in the camera and in the darkroom and by extension in the computer. Montage in
film and video is another form of collage. Montage means "editing" in French, this is a technique
for film editing that sequences a series of short shots for condensing time, space, and information.
Montage puts different shots on the same frame creates a contrasting feeling to highlight certain
specific characteristics of people or things. Two different segments are connected to each other,
which brings unexpected effects.
Jerry Uelsmann was one of the first to use darkroom manipulation and montage collage to
make photos. The creation of such techniques was mainly due to the continued struggle of
photographers in the early 1900s, among them the well-known artist Man Ray, who provided a
major contribution to the development of the history of photography and on whose premise various

11 Barthes, Roland., and Susan Sontag. A Barthes Reader New York: Hill and Wang, 1982.

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contemporary image processing techniques have grown. With the development of the times and the
innovation of science and technology, contemporary photography has reached the digital age.
The arrival of the digital age has allowed many artists to combine collage with digital
technology, creating many collages with surrealism. Surrealist artists have broken the boundaries
of reality and tradition, not only injecting new life into the painting field, but also bringing a new
direction of development to the field of contemporary photography.
British artist John Stezaker is a surrealist, abstract collage photographer who edits and
collages the photography of others to form his own work. Stezaker’s collages are irreverent; his
use of glamourous 1950s portraits, of dapper suited men and Hollywood stars, mashed together
with postcards of landscapes and with other faces, has the effect of the uncanny
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. As a non-
traditional photographer, he does not set up a camera to shoot his work, and as such, his award has
brought controversy in the industry. Stezaker collaged old postcards, film posters and photographs
from books and newspapers which destroys the meaning of the original work. Although it is similar
to how image processing software is now being modified and created, his work only qualifies as a
hand-pieced collage of photographs, not a “true” photograph in the sense of the word. Some critics
believe that although Stezaker is not a photographer in the traditional sense. He does not start with
technology but discovers and makes collages from old works so that these recycled images are not
forgotten or neglected but are rejuvenated through his practice. His analog approach to collage is
the reason his works are so impressive and why his audience continues to admire his work even
while technology and photography are perfectly combined.

12 "Top 10 Collage Artists: Hannah Höch To Man Ray". 2020. Another. https://www.anothermag.com/art
photography/3318/top-10-collage-artists-hannah-hoch-to-man-ray.

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In photography collage, Photoshop is one of the most frequently used digital tools.
Photoshop is a bitmap processing software produced by Adobe in the United States. Its powerful
functions are highly respected and loved by users. Collage is a technique that requires cleverly
cutting and combining various “images.” In other words, the materials and images must be
organized into one image in different frames. Photographers often use Photoshop to make collages,
and then “cutout” is used. At the same time, the hue processing in Photoshop can make any color
changes to the picture. The creator can modify the partial or overall color of the image according to
their own needs, such as brightness, hue, saturation, color balance, black and white, debugging by
reverse phase, etc. If these breakthrough color combinations are properly applied, the final work
will have a different visual experience, which is also a kind of inspiration.
Before the image processing, the designer can also adjust the composition of the picture
according to his own habits. The choice of the image and the arrangement of the composition
determine whether the painting can express the creative thoughts of the creator correctly. The
cropping tool in image processing can enlarge or narrow the image and even cut it into any shape.
The functions of image processing in Photoshop are available as long as the designer provides the
image. These are all controlled by the designer's aesthetics and subjectivity. Whether the
relationship of the image arrangement is reasonable also depends on the designer’s own creative
ability and experience. Therefore, Photoshop and other digital manipulation programs have blurred
the line between photographic reality and composited images (collage) that present an inability to
see the edges of one image as it meets another.

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Chapter 3: Collage in Digital Age
3.1 The Origin and Development of Internet Collage Design
Collage design is a time-honored design method that has played a significant role in human
art and design evolution. Collage has gained extraordinary vitality in today’s period of rapid
Internet development, attracting the attention of visual designers with its unique creative approach.
Collage design is the simplest and most effective way for Internet users to show their creativity.
That is why it has become increasingly popular and taken on a variety of new qualities in the
Internet age. The digital collage, which is the way of expression created in the early 20th century
by the art movements and artists using collage as aroused on the computer screens other than
canvas through the technology, has also been used in graphic design13.The term “eCollage”
(electronic Collage) can be used for a collage created by using computer tools. Increasingly, digital
software is a popular tool for designers to create work that pushes the boundaries of collage.
Collage is a traditional design method. It has a long history and plays a vital role in the
development of human art. In today’s era of rapid Internet development, collage has attracted the
favor of visual communication designers with its unique creative method, and at the same time, it
has gained unprecedented vitality. In our lives, pictures made through collage design are
ubiquitous. Collage is the simplest and most effective way for netizens to express their own
creativity. It is also because many collage designs are created, which are derived in the Internet era,
many new features have been added.

13 Gokasan, Gürkan. “Digital Collage, Poster Design and Stephan Bundi: The Semiotic Analysis of Theatre Posters.” Online
journal of communication and media technologies 7, no. 3 (2017).

18
Not only does it directly eliminate the stage of creating something new, but it also makes it
easier to get the source of inspiration in the face of many image materials. Each collage creation
has the opportunity to become the inspiration for the next collage creation, which satisfies the need
for interactive communication on the Internet.!!
!
3.2 Digital Collage in Contemporary Design
At the end of the 20th century, computer technology boomed, and computer manufacturers
such as Apple and Microsoft added creative fonts and typography to their computers, while many
graphics software programs were also created. The emergence of these new things made it easy and
fast to create pictures, and the trend of Internet users making their own pictures emerged. At the
same time, the rise of the Internet has facilitated the dissemination of homemade pictures. On the
one hand, the development of the Internet has significantly reduced the cost of information
dissemination, which has completely overturned the traditional media methods; on the other hand,
the Internet has created virtual social interaction, and it is difficult to express people’s emotions in
all aspects of the virtual social interaction is based on words alone, so the demand for virtual social
interaction to convey information with pictures has further prompted more homemade pictures to
appear on the Internet. Increasingly Social Media platforms such as Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook
use Snapchat and filters to allow users to build their own collage stories. In these images, the
collage is simple and intuitive to create and convey information, so it has become popular, and
digital design has been created. Digital collage design is most commonly used in homemade
emojis, illustrations, posters, and various promotional interfaces.

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The website https://eyeondesign.aiga.org is a platform that features designers who, among
other forms of graphic design, work in the genre of collage. Since there are no strict design
aesthetics or quality control, digital collage design is entirely the self-expression of the designer, so
it has a high degree of freedom.
We can see that we live in an era of the Internet where collage design is everywhere. On the
one hand, this does not require professional art and design skills, and on the other hand, it makes it
easier for the target audience to understand the message the communicator wants to convey in a
short period of time. However, the drawbacks of such homemade images are also obvious, namely,
the lack of aesthetics, simple production, and incongruous color matching.
A typical example is Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee
posted a photo on the Web in the early 1990s. The photographer of this photo was Tim Berners-
Lee’s friend De Gennaro. He used a scanner to scan the photo as a GIF pixel image and then
created it using Photoshop software on an Apple computer. This process illustrates the difference
between digital collage design and traditional collage design.
In the development of digital collage design, emojis are a special category, and as a carrier
of information transmission, the tension and efficiency of information transmission are always the
first consideration of designers. Compared to messages without emojis, those including emojis
were perceived as emotionally more intense and as of more extreme valence
14
. Therefore, in the
development of emoji, more attention was paid to the transmission of symbols and messages, the
relationship between coding and decoding, and the shaping of identity labels for the user group,
while the quality of the image production was always a secondary consideration. Therefore, we can

14 Erle, Thorsten M, Karoline Schmid, Simon H Goslar, and Jared D Martin. “Emojis as Social Information in Digital
Communication.” Emotion (Washington, D.C.) (2021).

20
still see many emojis with poor production, but they are still popular among Internet users, which is
related to their own uniqueness.
As the composition of the Internet population itself is extremely complex, the levels of
images produced through digital collage vary greatly. Although the expression of digital collage
design varies, the pursuit of visual impact is highly consistent, and they all try to attract the
attention of others in their own ways. Whether it is the “unorthodox” pictures at the beginning of
the 21st century or the emojis and advertisements afterward, all follow this trend.
The emergence of this phenomenon is a consequence of the explosive growth of
information in the Internet era, and pictures with strong visual attraction are more advantageous in
information transmission. Since designers are subject to very few constraints when creating, there
are neither strict aesthetic requirements nor quality control of the work. Digital collage is entirely
the self-expression of the designer, which is similar to the process of artists creating artworks.
Because of the low production threshold of digital, there are a large number of creators
from all trades and professions, and they design from different perspectives. The final result is a
wide variety of creative works with mixed styles and great variability.

3.3 Example of Artists and Designers
Ruby Marques, who also goes by Broobs, has colorful pictures taken during a national,
racial assessment to be shared between feeds, grids, and timelines. He is one of the most famous
Artists behind Instagram, and he is also known for his political posters. Since 2016, Marquez has
been committed to creating politically motivated artworks with collage. In 2020, after the Black
Lives Matter protest spread to the world with social networks, Instagram, as a social media

21
platform with a vast number of users, has been recognized by many artists and designers to spread
social justice, political ideas, and racial equality. The Queer community and the Queer history have
long been at the center of his work. Marques makes full use of digital tools in his collage creation.
First, he uses the iPhone to capture the image elements, then uses the Magic Eraser application to
crop, then imports the image into the Procreate to move its position, and finally uses Photoshop to
make the background color. Marques's way of creating and how he shows his artwork fully reflect
the development trend of digital collage in the information age. Increasingly, designers use the
products of the information era to create digital designs, and the Internet has also made
communication and exposure easier.
The Australian Graphic Designer and Art Director Leif Podhajsky is famous for working
with artists in his distinctive album art. As a successful photographer, Podhajsky has attracted a
great following through his popular Instagram and Facebook reports by his brooding scenery
photography. Podhajsky’s work has been described as “striking abstractions of nature – mirrored
vistas, engulfing waves, rippling, melting cosmic landscapes”.
15
Podhajsky uses Photoshop to create
album art, and he uses Adobe Premiere to edit Mount Kimbie which is an electronic duo in
English. He integrates collage into album design, jewelry poster design, and photography. In his
collage, he also uses natural elements such as mountains, water, and sky as materials, forming a
special visual experience through the rearrangement of images in photoshop.

15 "ABOUT - Leif Podhajsky". Archived from the original on January 27, 2013.

22
Chapter 4: My Practice
4.1 Projects
Collage is a secondary creation based on existing elements, which inspired me more is the
entire collage process. I define my practice as collage instead of a copy. It does!t mean that I use
the whole image from an outside source, it is a way of recreating and recycling to reflect popular
culture in different ways. Artists and designers absorb sources and material from existing art works
and redefine them all the time. Most of my work is the form of a digital collage. Digital collage is
the technique of using computer tools in collage creation to encourage chance associations of
disparate visual elements and the subsequent transformation of the visual results through the use of
electronic media
16
. It is commonly used in the creation of digital art using tools such as Photoshop
and Adobe Premiere. Making collage art is a big challenge for my creativity. Every time I find and
acquire materials it's a new inspiration.

4.2 Work of Art in Professional Work
I have used collage frequently in my graphic design. I designed three posters for an art
gallery which is a classical art gallery built in a Chinese modern shopping mall. In this work, I try
to explore classical Greek culture, the feminine body, and the feminine archetypes. So, I
incorporated many classical elements into the design, such as the statues and the ancient Greek
temples. I chose the statues of Venus and Athena during the creation. Venus is the goddess of love
and beauty who symbolizes charm and beauty, she likes being the focus of attention and will offer
inspiration to her admirers. Athena is the goddess of wisdom who symbolizes independence,

16 Collage. (2021, August 19). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collage

23
intelligence, knowledge, and self-confidence. And this is exactly the characteristic of this art
gallery.
After I cut out these classical elements, I used repetition and superposition to give each
figure a different color, showing either a gradient or a contrast effect which gives people a modern
feel. The collision between classic and modern is like the collision between Greek sculpture and
modern colors. It is a conflicting but balanced beauty. This is exactly the collage I understand. The
three posters represent modern, multiple, multi-national. The art museum inside the shopping mall
is an Art Playground where culture, entertainment, shopping, and living are all around art. It is
where ideas, trends, and lifestyles collide to form new ideas and new inspirations.

24

Figure 1 Shanghai K11 Art Mall Posters 1(Yuqi Zhang）

25

Figure 2Shanghai K11 Art Mall Posters 2 (Yuqi Zhang）

26

Figure 3Shanghai K11 Art Mall Posters 3 (Yuqi Zhang）

27
4.3 Work of Art in Contemporary Design
Collage has strong expressive power. It can combine different painting types and different
materials into one image by mixing and matching. This has a certain effect on the expression of
words and images in book design. I have used collage in the design of the book cover.
From a teenager to an adult, I have always been a fan of science fiction movies. And I am
especially interested in exploring outer space and alien subjects. A few years ago, after watching
the movie “Interstellar”, I became deeply interested in the concept of wormholes as described in
the film. I’m making a series of book covers which are related to space, wormholes, and other
content informed by postmodernist design. The book cover I designed includes images,
composition, and collage. Wormhole is a concept, “theoretically, a wormhole might connect
extremely long distances such as a billion light years, or short distances such as a few meters, or
different points in time, or even different universes”
17
. In brief, a wormhole is a worm that passes
through the middle of the apple to reach its shortest path. The apple becomes a key design element
in the book. I put an apple shape with a wormhole pattern in the middle. This is the beginning of
my collage attempt, although it is not made by hand, but the principle is more like placing elements
one by one. The wormhole and star diagrams in the picture are found on the official website of
NASA, and the rest were drawn by me. I use lines and circles to represent the future and
technology. And it is this collage practice that opened me up to explore different collage forms.

17 “Wormhole Construction: Proceed with Caution.” Physical review focus 2 (1998).

28

Figure 4 Wormhole book design (Yuqi Zhang)

29
I have also used collage to design a series of movie posters. As a woman, I like to
incorporate the awakening stage of female self-consciousness in my creation. My story is inspired
by an ancient Chinese fable. In the original story, a female evil spirit seduces a married man to
occupy the human body and finally kills his family. This story is based on male vision and blames
all tragedies on the seduction of female evil spirits but ignores male cowardice and indecision. To
explore the self-identity of women and the Anima and Animus in psychology, I rewrote this story.
The story written by me was called “the Naked Face” it is a horror and fantasy film. A brief
synopsis is, “John meets a mysterious woman and hides her from his wife. The woman was a
powerful evil spirit with no face. She must wear a mask to pretend to appear as a normal person.
Now his simple life has changed completely.” I tried to portray the female evil spirit in the story
into a plumper female image. She is not bad in nature, but she has been deceived into getting
revenge and becoming bad. In the subconscious Anima, the women who cheat are often beautiful
but dangerous. What I want is to break this limitation of thinking. Is this just a male conjecture?
Based on the story, I created four distinctly different movie posters. The posters are 24 x 36
Inches, they each include an image as well as a copy line and or tag line. This project was done in 3
rounds: Idea development, creative, revisions, and presentation. How key art images are created,
how they function to illustrate a story, and how they inform us about the mood or nature of the film
were discussed during design. I thought about how all these elements work and how they change
when they are applied to a different format or used as part of the branding of the film. I also
thought about the choice of images, where to obtain them, legalities, and stock house imagery. I
found the original images on a website called ‘Unsplash’. Because it is a horror film which has

30
elements of fantasy and love story, I searched for pictures including women, masks, dark, lovers,
man and city.
During the selection of imagery, I chose first a photo of a woman with a masked face, and
this original photo gave me a sense of mystery. Its background color is dark green, and I use a
brush to paint the green fabric tears to add some horror to it. Here green is used to symbolize
money, greed, jealousy, and envy. The story is about a woman who becomes the lover of a married
man. Dark green especially fits the concept of the movie. I used red for the typeface. The
complimentary color creates a stark contrast and feeling when used with the image.
In another exercise, I used Photoshop to draw the mask on the original picture. This is an
attempt to produce a two-dimensional illustration and three-dimensional combination to produce an
uncanny image. I also use a combination of red and green. Red is the color of fire and blood, and it
is associated with energy, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and
love. After the collage, the image of the woman changed from helpless and fragile to mysterious
and unsettling.
For the third poster exercise, I chose a very feminine image. The original picture gave me a
feeling of cosmetic advertising, but I split the original picture in two and replaced half of it with
black and white. At the corner, I use an edge of burned texture paper which can provide a feeling of
depression and danger so that the original sweet and lovely sense is gone. This combination creates
a persevering but dangerous female. I choose the mixture of pink and grey because pink represents
romance and danger, the color grey is a timeless and practical color that is often associated with
loss or depression.

31
In the last poster design exercise, I added a male figure. This time, I chose two images as
the original elements, the main color of the poster is black and dark. Black is associated with
power, fear, mystery, strength, death, evil, and aggression, authority, rebellion. This is the figure of
a wizard who represents power and wisdom. The sunset symbolizes the completion of a day’s work
and shows the passage of time. As the sun sets, it is time to end the day and take a break. The
awesome beauty of the setting sun is also a symbol of the beauty and mystery of life itself. The
three people in this poster have formed a balanced relationship. The man is in the dark, and the
other figures are in the light. This is my attempt in the collage to explore the relationship between
genders.
All the elements in these posters come from stock photography or existing images, they are
collaged together using different visual cues such as color, texture, and composition to define an
original story. That’s one of the unique features that collage has, no matter what existing materials
you use, the final result will become of brand new story based on the designer’s narrative.

32

Figure 5The Naked Face Movie Posters Campaign (Yuqi Zhang)

33
4.4 How I Use Collage
My process of creating a collage can be divided into three stages. The first is to establish
the theme. Different themes correspond to different cultures, techniques, and visual concepts; the
second is the selection of images. I usually find the original images on a website called “Unsplash”
which is an online platform for designers. I regard it as a part of the digital design community. All
the images from “Unsplash” are free and eligible to grab. Designers do not have to worry about
copyright issues. The various images and video materials on the website also provide a lot of useful
resources for my creation. I choose relatively clean images, such as portraits, landscapes, or
objects. These pictures are more convenient for me to cutout and collage them together; Finally, the
rearrangement of the images. The intention of the collage is to combine various and disparate
images and materials while still retaining a message. The recombination of forming a brand-new
image is the most important and difficult step. Composition, color, texture, and arrangement are all
directions that require careful consideration. At the same time, I also need to pay attention to the
unity and coordination of the image. My hope is to avoid stacking of different elements and
pictures resulting in a messy effect with no clear message.
Another essential element in the creation of collage, is the attention and use of color. Color
is the basic element of design. In collages, the difference in texture between materials and the
randomness of recombination will produce various and vibrant colors. The elements in the collage
are integrated with the surrounding environment and the colors of the objects in the original
material. When I strip and reorganize the elements from the original material environment, the
elements are independent of each other in color. Many environmental colors are affected, and some

34
colors are even incompatible with each other. If you make effective use of the color characteristics
of the collage elements, it can play a role in highlighting the shape.
My most frequent digital tool is Photoshop. I cut out the pictures in Photoshop and make
them into individual elements, and then reassemble and collage them together to create my
compositions. Photoshop is a valuable tool in digital collage. It provides a lot of convenience for
my creation and saves time so that I can try distinctive styles quickly and with more confidence.

4.5 Video Collage
The explosive growth of video data demands the video presentation technique which
supports fast browsing of video content
18
. The amount of video data is significantly driven by the
rapid development of digital devices increasing in recent years. The boom in short videos such as
TikTok has made it hard for people to settle down and preview a long video anymore. I define my
work as dynamic media assemblage#$which is a method to summarize and present media by
packing and playing a collection of video clips or images simultaneously on a canvas.
19
$During
my practice in video collage, three common methods are often used: medium insertion, medium
deletion, and medium rearrangement. I collected various videos to express meaning and effect
different from the original.$

18 Mei, Tao, Bo Yang, Shi-Qiang Yang, and Xian-Sheng Hua. “Video Collage: Presenting a Video Sequence Using a Single
Image.” The Visual computer 25, no. 1 (2008): 39–51.
19 Luo, Sheng-Jie, Chun-Yu Tsai, Wei-Chao Chen, and Bing-Yu Chen. “Dynamic Media Assemblage.” IEEE transactions on
circuits and systems for video technology 23, no. 12 (2013): 2044–2053.

35
One of my projects titled “Hollywood Disaster Movie” is based on a blog. Deadspin’s
subsection The Concourse blog has done statistical work on the on-screen destruction of American
cities by Hollywood and found that Los Angeles rates high for number of times it has been
fictionally destroyed. They start with the Earthquake in 1974. The blogger notes “Whether out of
convenience or laziness or a deeply-felt animosity for their hometown, filmmakers love fake-
destroying Los Angeles, so as the golden state California”
20
. In those disaster movies, some of the
destruction is caused by climatic and geological events.
I wanted to explore how California was destroyed in Hollywood movies. I also wanted to
warn people that this fantasy is becoming our new reality, what once was a fictional disaster movie
has been replaced by environmental damage caused by climate change. In the process of making
the video, I searched IMDB and found eleven different movies, but all related to disaster that
happened in California. They are the foundation of my video. It is a medium rearrangement. I put
together these film clips so that people can more visually sense the impact of those images.

20 Adrian Glick Kudler. “The complete list of Los Angeles destruction movies. Filmmakers love to destroy LA”. April 19, 2018.
https://la.curbed.com/2014/3/21/10129198/los-angeles-destruction-disaster-movies

36

Figure 6 Hollywood Disaster Movie Project 1

Figure 7Hollywood Disaster Movie Project 2

37
4.6 Narrative and Self-Identity
In the process of my creation, I also pay great attention to the expression of self-identity.
Identity is a kind of cognition and description of the subject itself, including many aspects such as
cultural identity and national identity. I am an international student in the United States and a
minority. The Covid-19 pandemic has affected my life like so many across the world. I isolated
myself from family and friends, quarantined in my own room and rarely went out. My friends have
returned to China or left after graduation, which deepened my loneliness. Coupled with my cultural
and language barrier, it made me even more frustrated during that time. I decided to use the collage
method to record that special period. I also explored the impact of patterns in nature on digital
media design, including the relationships among chaos, harmony, beauty, and shared experience. I
used a variety of media platforms and methodologies, including filmmaking, interactive media,
text, visual art. The experience of quarantine and my research resulted in three videos. Each of
them is a video collage. These video collages incorporate image and video but also include collage
with sound. The theme of them is “The Passage of Time”. For me, time is like a river flow that
never ends. Innocent children may become mature men when time passes.
Images demonstrating the passing of time within life, such as running water, clock, dawn
and darkness, hourglass, light, and shadow. I collaged the images of these elements and combined
their sounds. Although time exists objectively, human's perception of time is subjective. So, time is
the same, what changes is our mood.

38

Figure 8 The Passage of Time 1

I use the growth and decay of flowers and the integration with nature to reflect the
irreversibility of life and time. In the second part, I use the beginning of life and the end of life to
reflect the shortness of life. Sometimes people’s lives are as short as the flowers, and just as fragile.
Based on the Covid-19 pandemic, many people’s lives were cut short. This is a montage scene; I
think the juxtaposition of two shots is greater than the meaning of a single shot. Flowers and life
are unconnected elements originally, but the combination of the two can conwtrast and underline
the pandemic life is fragile.
I also recorded my life since quarantine. As time goes by, my daily life is repeated. I bought
flowers and fruits and kept them at home to observe their gradual decay and deterioration. I also

39
recorded the daily changes in sunlight and the food I ate. During the quarantine, time seems to slow
down because our depression. I combined these fragments of life with the news about the
pandemic. I began to wonder how long we have been like this and how long until this pandemic
will be over. The elapsed time in the pandemic is irreversible. What can be changed is the duration
of the next pandemic.
These images show my mood during isolation by combining photography, collage, music,
etc. they are my own narratives. These videos express my impotence in an environment under the
siege of a pandemic and the helplessness of our global community. Even now if we are in the post-
epidemic period, we still suffer different degrees in all aspects of life. My collage is a way of
expressing my heart and expressing it to the whole society.

Figure 9 The Passage of Time 2

40

Figure 10 The Passage of Time 3

41
Chapter 5: Conclusion
5.1 Recap
Collage, with its unique style of artistic expression, has gradually accepted by the general
audience and used in the creation of various art practice. The emergence of collage has not only
brought vitality to the field of art but also opened up a new development direction for
contemporary art. Therefore, the in-depth study of collage art is of great significance to the
diversified development of contemporary art, and collage art has definitely become one of the
symbols of contemporary art with its unique advantage of being highly experimental.
Today, the previous complicated cutting and pasting process can be completed on the keyboard by
the development of technology and the advent of computers. Digital collage has become a new art
form and new media collage art has been spread across the Internet. To create the perfect collage
that reflects their worldview, designers employ computer software. Collage has become a means
for satisfying modern people's creative wishes and breaking down their own rational constraints.
I am currently experimenting with collage in book design, poster design, and film editing,
and I fully appreciate the diversity and unlimited potential of collage. By digital image and text I
design narratives about my upbringing and personal experiences. Collage is a good way to show
one’s self-identity, and it can also turn waste into treasure, recombining seemingly useless things
into amazing artwork. I will try to integrate collage with interaction design or information design in
future design practices so that today the charm and diversity of collage will be shown in advanced
art form.

42
Bibliography

Adrian Glick Kudler. “The complete list of Los Angeles destruction movies. Filmmakers love to
destroy LA”. April 19, 2018. https://la.curbed.com/2014/3/21/10129198/los-angeles-
destruction-disaster-movies

Amy K. Kilgard. Collage: A Paradigm for Performance Studies. Liminalities: A Journal of
Performance Studies Vol. 5, No. 3 (2009).

Barthes, Roland., and Susan Sontag. A Barthes Reader New York: Hill and Wang, 1982.

Berliner, Nancy. The 8 Brokens : Chinese Bapo Painting First edition. Boston: MFA
Publications, 2018.

Enslen Denise. "Origin of the term "collage". Archived from the original on April 12, 2012.

Erle, Thorsten M, Karoline Schmid, Simon H Goslar, and Jared D Martin. “Emojis as Social
Information in Digital Communication.” Emotion (Washington, D.C.) (2021).

Gokasan, Gürkan. “Digital Collage, Poster Design and Stephan Bundi: The Semiotic Analysis of
Theatre Posters.” Online journal of communication and media technologies 7, no. 3 (2017).

Greenberg: Collage. Retrieved July 20, 2010. Sharecom.Ca.
http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/collage.html.

Harding, James M., and James M Harding. Cutting Performances: Collage Events, Feminist
Artists, and the American Avant-Garde. Cutting Performances. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2012.

Luo, Sheng-Jie, Chun-Yu Tsai, Wei-Chao Chen, and Bing-Yu Chen. “Dynamic Media
Assemblage.” IEEE transactions on circuits and systems for video technology 23, no. 12
(2013): 2044–2053.

Mei, Tao, Bo Yang, Shi-Qiang Yang, and Xian-Sheng Hua. “Video Collage: Presenting a Video
Sequence Using a Single Image.” The Visual computer 25, no. 1 (2008): 39–51.

Monteiro, Mike. Design Is a Job. 1st edition. New York, New York: Book Apart, 2012.

Weidemann, Christiane., Petra. Larass, and Melanie Klier. 50 Women Artists You Should Know
Munich ;: Prestel, 2008.

"ABOUT - Leif Podhajsky". Archived from the original on January 27, 2013.

43
"L.H.O.O.Q. Or La Joconde » Norton Simon Museum". 1964. Nortonsimon.Org.
https://www.nortonsimon.org/art/detail/P.1969.094.

"Top 10 Collage Artists: Hannah Höch To Man Ray". 2020. Another.
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hoch-to-man-ray.

“Wormhole Construction: Proceed with Caution.” Physical review focus 2 (1998).

Abstract (if available)

Abstract My thesis project explores the use of collaged pre-existing found images and digital media to create a personal narrative. Through the use of digital image and text I design narratives about my upbringing and personal experiences. Advertising and popular culture often reflect personal narratives and design language can be manipulated to express and produce personal feeling. Through my research and work, I have found that images and videos are often collaged as a way to deliver information or message. I want to take these messages and make them tell my story and re-manipulate them to reflect my personal narrative. ❧ With the development of the internet, there are many images and videos available to everyone. Artists and designers absorb sources and material from existing art works and redefine them frequently. Rather than copying, I consider my practice collage. I do not use whole images from other works. Instead, I recreate and recycle existing messages to reflect popular culture and my own stories in a different way. ❧ My thesis will discuss how the collage is presented through narrative in different forms, my research will discuss collage in design, photography, and performance art. The cultural difference between Asia and USA in contemporary collage design will also be examined. Finally, I plan to tell my personal story through the application of digital collage, largely acquired through mass marketing imagery.

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