What an interesting article! This could be interpreted in several ways: a) a young person starting a somewhat profitable business and riding the wave b) consumers simply picking out a cute decorating/theme/plan for their personal space and spending $$ for it without any hint of self expression other than "I like blue stuff" or c) a decline in the willingness of individuals to express their own thoughts and interests in a visual form because, according to Instagram, everything and everyone has to be beautiful 24 seven 365 days a year. Choices A and B are reasonable and quite understandable. Choice C is just kinda sad.
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weird and so very waste full for this Eco-conscious / minimalist / zero-waste / conscious consuming generation.
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One of the genuinely affecting moments in the movie "Bridesmaids " was the home crafted gift made by Annie for her friend- inexpensive items meaningful to them, carefully put together .
That is an example of what collage can be. Stop looking at Instagram and "influencers ".
Look at what you like, what matters to you.
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sick and sad and all about $$$
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Straight out of George Orwell. Now everyone, through this Dream Kit, can have the same dream on their walls.
The Collage, which once upon a time was a highly personal form of expression, has now given way to Group Instagram Design Think if you have the $70 plus to spend.
First world problem.
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Actually, I like the idea of being able to get just the images. Magazines aimed at women are usually full of content that's going to make you feel bad about yourself, and then there's all the advertising. Flipping through a magazine is a pretty unhealthy experience, in my opinion. I can understand how, if you're reading a magazine anyway, you'd want to keep the images you really like. But why get a magazine just for the images?
People are so ready to condemn anything young women like. Someone's making money creating pretty images--that seems good. Lots of other people are enjoying those images--that's also good. People who want to do more work and be more creative are still allowed to do things their way.
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This was depressing to read. Obviously, not as depressing as 99% of the other news. But collages are fun because they are low budget, spontaneous, a little messy, and most of all, personal. I can see how with the death of magazines and then Tumblr, these kits have proliferated, which is tragic.
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You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. You're not "curating" anything. Stop it.
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Make the effort to collect your own images and ideas. I appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit but do your own thing and don't follow. Waste of money. Also, can we move past Instagram pink yet?
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A lot like all these "talented " people who put up stolen video content on You Tube. Then add a few comments or narration. Some terrible & totally inappropriate music and then seem to think they have "created" something.
Just last night we saw a short "tribute" to an old TV show we liked. It had parts of an episode.Various bits of background info mixed in. Then, at the end the person who put this together wrote "feel free to share this with everyone". Amazing. Taking credit. As if it was theirs to share to begin with !
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Collages: I always saw it as art for those who have no drawing or painting talent or no art materials. Just "stuff" and glue. It should come from one's personal experience and/or brain. I find it sad that now one can just buy someone else's experiences and/or brain.
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Bravo to this entrepreneurial influencer to capitalize on this idea. The problem lies in the purchasers who are not confident enough to compile their own collection of ideas, especially the customer featured who’s in her 20’s! This is the best time of your life to gather & collect ideas/friends and try new things! So strange to have to buy someone’s else idea of a life. But it’s genius to invent a whole new product category!
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"For that price, you could also buy up to two dozen print magazines and create your own stack of collage-worthy images."
...and give what you didn't use to a friend to make his/her own.
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@Minmin And I am sure people can find all sorts of resources at the library, Dover publications, or from Good Will, etc and cheap ones too. You know, old National Geographics, etc. There are cheap resources to find materials. I am constantly collecting postcards, calendars, and printing up older artworks off of the internet to personalize things, like my annual calendar diary, something I enjoy doing every year. Heck, you can even use interesting wrapping paper when it goes on sale. There are so many affordable options for the adventurous.
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It's quite funny reading this article and comments and their use of the word "curate", and the NYTimes essay also appearing today on the use of the same word.
Think of collage kits as slightly customizable posters, and they seem less like the end of imagination as we know it, and more like an inexpensive decorating option..
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This article avoided the question of copyright. It's one thing when a person rips pages from magazine and posts them on their own bedroom walls as a way to celebrate their individuality, and its another entirely when someone starts reproducing those images and selling them for a profit. The entire enterprise seems clever but entirely unethical.
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@Cort I think the people are taking their own pictures, not repurposing magazine pictures. If not, I agree.
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IKEA has been doing this for a while. Plus you can buy frames there.
The bad news just keeps coming.
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This makes me so sad. When I was a teenager, I would walk to Emory (University) Village and buy a copy of Vogue and Elle. Did this religiously throughout high school. I made collages in scrapbooks of dresses, artwork, jewelry, etc. that caught MY eye. I loved my magazines!
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I find this piece oddly placed in the Style section, when there's zero style going on. This would be better placed in the Business section, or Obituaries (death of thinking for oneself).
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Capitalism ruins everything (imagination most of all).
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I think the product is misnamed. It should be called a conformity kit.
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@SL Good one!
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Realistically, anyone who genuinely is interested in self-expression is spending $89 for a collection of generic images. I don’t even see this as a collage, it’s more of a wall decor that happens to be comprised of many images as opposed to one. A real collage is self-made.
Do you say there’s a “mono-culture” when people buy the same generic artwork from Costco or the supermarket? Or is it just when it’s available to purchase through social media?
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@Rose is NOT spending*
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This is something we did, along with decoupage on items such as metal lunch boxes, to express ourselves with minimal expenditure of money. How very sad that they now sell decoupage kits-and astonishing that people buy them. This is so telling of our culture, and what is most sad, I think, is that the satisfaction we felt at decorating our rooms with magazines, etc. will not be shared by those who buy a "curated" kit. It's just another empty activity.
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40% of students are depressed. 40% have anxiety, with considerable overlap between the two. Buddy&Soul is my platform for personal development. We created a cluster of eCourses for students, where my favorite one is 'Cultivating Authenticity'.
What better cure against the never ending anxiety than the ability to be authentic, to just be you?
if there is always a mold you need to fit into, or a pre-selected set of photographs to describe your personality, there is very little room for personality, quirkiness, and uniqueness. Not to mention some fun and creativity.
For New Year's Day I had a collage meeting with a few good friends. WE all leafed through the same magazine, and each came up with an entirely different set of images and projects. Because we are all different people. No right or wrong here. And that, my dear friends, young and old, is OKAY.
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This is oh, so sad. The purpose of creating a collage is to express your *unique* personal ideas, dreams, interests, etc. (and yes, that takes longer than a few days to accumulate). How could you possibly buy the experience?
And when I read the company uses pages that approximate the thickness of a magazine cover, I really had to conclude this is the height of laziness.
15
When I was in high school (turn of this century), my room was a literal floor-to-ceiling collage. My grandma couldn't enter my room without having anxiety, it was so overstimulating. I guess these collage packs have an audience because, while I used to read magazines and collect dELiA*s catalogs, everything's digital now. Until bedroom walls become screens, this seems like a good middle ground.
3
That quote from Ms. Palatino reads like an Onion article! Wow. What a time this is that we're living in. It's easy to laugh at but it also just feels deeply sad.
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Shout out to @laurashleycollabs on Instagram for still collaging the old school way!
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Nuts! I used to collect all sorts of stuff to make collages with, it would never have occurred to me that I could buy pre-approved collage stuff. Now I have a lot less, but still manage to keep a decent amount of scraps and magazine pages on hand for future use.
Hey, glad she can make some money off these uncreative people, but I'd love to encourage people who read this article to do some collaging of their own. It is fun!
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Those who can't do, buy.
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This is yet another example of instant gratification, plus the tendency to encourage people to become robots. They are not designing the own collages -- and plenty of magazines exist with colored pictures. Want some? I subscribe to a few myself. This is like "paint by number" or making "crafts" from pieces of cardboard or plastic punched out of a larger sheet. Everybody can be "successful" without much personal involvement. To make a collage yourself, you might need to have personal interests! Do you like birds, animals, flowers, tide pools, mountains, laboratories, historical figures, your own photos? WHAT? Find something and play with that!It might take some time; it might take some searching. That's the idea. Make it YOURS.
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Just goes to show that ....truly anything can be commodified. Paying money for a 'collage kit'? Seems to go completely against the very basis of collage (DIY). Oye.
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This seems so strange to me, the whole idea that you can buy someone else's vision of what a collage should be composed of. it appears we're living in a post creativity world. Sad
21
(Snarkily said)
I am sooo busy. I am also unsure of myself too.
Does anyone know of a start-up that can curate my entire life?
Please decide what I wear, send me prepackaged food to eat, a script what to say at work, social gatherings, on a date, and to my parents.
Also, I hope it includes who to vote for, a Spotify playlist of the latest hottest music and ingredients to make the coolest designer cocktails.
Basically an everything life kit anticipating all my needs. (I hope it comes with an app that will play soothing mindfulness chimes to wake me up.)
Of course I would surely pay the premium subscription model that includes what should be read my funeral and the best eulogy ever!
I can't think, feel, or create my life.
Please someone rescue me.
I am a robot.
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@Frank You summed it up so perfectly. We really are losing the ability to think for ourselves and do anything except follow a script for life.
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@Frank , all those kits and services are just a few clicks away. gee, don't you know any influencers? are you wasting your time with friends?
so very sad.
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I thought millennials valued experiences...
collage kits that take the craft out of craft ....?
where's the experience ?
an emotional purchase, i guess...
is this capitalism at its best;
a curated , branded, "Collage Kit" via the internet -
"its even better then the real thing"
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Well I guess people with no imagination or creativity, who are not intellectually curious, do not go to museums or galleries, do not read books or do not travel, need this sort of thing.
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Consumption knows no bounds! Wake up people, purchase of collage kit is not needed to collage!
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This is the height of laziness: Buy someone else's ideas of what to put up. Kind of like having a de-personalized interior decorator doing it. When I worked at the Museum shop at the National Gallery of Art in DC, they held a Dada exhibition and one of the things we sold - and us staffers rolled our eyes at - was a pre-made collection of Dada-esque clippings so you could make your 'own' Dada collage artworks. Unreal. Anyone paying attention to that exhibition would have come away with nothing but a genuine desire to DYI pretty much anything and everything. No pre-fab needed.
Just collect stuff you like along the way and you will have something unique and uniquely you.
8
Why not just download a finished product?
2
I’m a visual artist and this is not for me, but I also don’t quite see the difference between doing this and buying other art for your wall. We can get granular and define “collage” as something that should be inspirational and personal, and in this sense, the “art has changed since my time” outcry makes sense. But is there any true difference between doing this and buying prints at IKEA? Or are we mostly angry that fake collages have the sheen of individuality, when in reality, it’s anything but?
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@TJ Hamilton That's about what I'm thinking. What sticks for me is its claim to a greater degree of self-expression than, say, a Monet print on the wall. When I see a collage, I presume each item was selected, individually, by the person who's displaying it.
9
Wow, where do I start? Another example of "the commodification of everything." Use your imagination, if you have one!
The best collages come from the juxtaposition of found images (magazines, junk mail, packaging, books, etc.) with inventive tearing, cutting and pasting. This includes collaging digitally through montage, layering, manipulating, screen grabs and so on.
Tomorrow my University of Minnesota graphic design major juniors, in a course titled Text & Image, will turn in two collaged posters that communicate a binary issue. They will likely be richer, deeper, funnier, more profound, more provocative and definitely more original than anything created with these "collage kits."
63
Well yes, but it’s still rearranging images that you yourself did not produce. Aside from the cost, there really is not a whole lot of difference in collecting images over months or years vs buying a whole lot of them in one fell swoop. The art in collage is in the juxtaposition of the images and I imagine that can be done just as effectively with a kit as with anything else.
You could try an exercise with your students regarding these kits. I bet they would come up with solutions that would surprise you.
5
@Susan I disagree when you say there’s not a whole lot of difference between collecting images over years vs. buying them. The biggest difference is how each collection is curated. One is curated by the collage-creator; the other is curated by an influencer.
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@ Masie,
You are missing my point. The essential art of collage is not curation, it is juxtaposition. An effective collage puts images together in interesting and provocative ways. It makes you see things differently.
I agree with you that pasting up a set of pre-selected images is a kind of fake scrapbooking, but to me that is not collage. It's just wallpaper.
10
One thing my generation and below have done is taken the creativity/DIY out of everything. Art is now bought and packaged, when a collage should be free flowing, not bought.
In sports, instead of pickup games at the park, it's expensive leagues with uniforms and coaches. In music, instead of garage bands you put together, agents form bands for commercial purposes. These bands usually are not good.
I miss the true DIY days.
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I used to have a large floor to ceiling corkboard on my wall and I filled it with clippings (back when I was in high school in the 2000s)
It is still in my old room, and its kind of this amazing artifact of the time. Celebrities, postcards, magazine clippings with the latest of 2005-2008, it all comes together in a colorful curated way that represents what I loved and inspired me at the time. I feel like thats the fun of collage, you can assemble your interests regardless of artistic talent.
I am an art director and maximalist so maybe this just comes as a natural inclination, I just would love to see what inspires other people instead of everything looking so uniform and curated to the point it doesn't invoke new ideas.
51
Instead of collages made from magazines cutouts, I’ve been making photo collages since college. While it’s a pain to take down hundreds of photos every time I move, it’s nice to see pictures of my friends and family up on my wall. Every time I go on vacation, I print a new batch of photos when I get back. I’ve left space for my next adventures to make it up there too.
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