Cut That Out: Collage in Contemporary Design

The most innovative uses of collage today, from 50 leading contemporary graphic designers across 15 different countries—including Hort, Mike Perry, Stefan Sagmeister, Matthew Cooper, and many others. Collage—a term coined by Picasso and Braque at the beginning of the twentieth century—is undergoing a vibrant resurgence, and it's not hard to see why. Destructive yet sustainable, digital and lo-fi, thriving on mass media and a sense of nostalgia—the catchphrases for collage are as contemporary as the bands that are using it on their record sleeves. New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl calls it “The most consequential visual-art form of the twentieth century.” Today, designers are combining traditional techniques and methods with digital technology to encompass assemblage, photomontage, mixed-media installation, digital manipulation, and even tapestry and video to create truly dazzling work for personal projects, clients, and commercial campaigns alike. Curated by Ryan Doyle and Mark Edwards, who work together as the studio DR.ME, Cut That Out focuses on the compositions of 50 leading designers and studios for whom collage has been the key to creating vibrant, effective work—for clients from Beck to Coca-Cola; Target and The New York Times to Grimes, Tame Impala, Panda Bear, and Stella McCartney. In brief Q&As, the designers describe their individual techniques and processes, sources of inspiration, and thoughts on the medium. With fresh and diverse work copiously illustrated throughout, Cut That Out is a rich seam of inspiration to be mined by all students, graphic designers, and art aficionados who wish to explore the creative possibilities of collage in their work, showing how artists take advantage of the freedom inherent in collage to combine various media and methods in the search for something entirely unexpected, original, and wildly new.