Trendspotting: Collages
In which kids raised on the internet discover why their parents enjoy scrapbooking so much.
Last month, despite never using Pinterest except to find photos of hairstyles I might want, I spent a good two hours desperately scouring the internet for an invite code to Pinterest’s latest offering, ‘Shuffles by Pinterest’ — the allure of being an early adopter is too strong, I guess.
Per Pinterest, ‘Shuffles’ is “the world’s best tool for creative expression, powered by Pinterest’s massive visual library. Shufflers create moodboards and collages to dream big, plan projects, make jokes, and connect with their community.” Essentially, it’s a photo editing app that makes creating collages incredibly easy - it even has its own automatic selection tool - and has come along at just the right time to capitalise on the growing popularity of collage as an artform and a tool of self-expression.
As is my right as someone with ADHD, I immediately became obsessed with the app, but have since calmed down somewhat. Here are a couple of the Shuffles I created during my brief period of fixation, however:
Perhaps my favourite feature of the app is the ability to export collages as time lapse videos, making them perfect for then uploading to TikTok set to the music of your choice.
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I haven’t seen much talk of Shuffles outside of fandom spaces and TikTok, which is surprising, given how popular Pinterest is and given its place in this emerging collage renaissance that’s currently taking place.
Not to be outdone, TikTok introduced a new template, Collage II, earlier this month that allows users to create video collages that end up looking something like this:
Popular video editing app CapCut has a template that creates similar collages, but it’s not available in my region, so I wasn’t able to try it out for myself. Here’s a tutorial video from a Brazilian TikToker, however:
As if all of these weren’t already contributing to the collage renaissance enough, Apple released iOS 16 last week with a fascinating new feature: the ability for your phone to select key components of any image and copy them, allowing you to essentially turn them into stickers that can then be used on their own or pasted onto other images. The perfect feature for collage making, in other words.
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Here’s the best use of that feature that I’ve seen so far:
As someone who has been in a toxic relationship with Photoshop’s Magic Wand tool for almost two decades at this point, the fact that both Pinterest and Apple have created products that essentially automate that tool out of existence is wild to me. And as someone who grew up wondering what exactly my mum and her friends enjoyed about scrapbooking, I think I understand them a bit better now — it’s fun! And, in the case of the aforementioned apps, templates and features, an easy, entry-level way to express your creativity and jazz up your photo dumps.
If you notice an uptick in the number of collages posted across the various social media platforms over the next few months, one of the above is most likely responsible.
P.S I no longer have any Shuffles invite codes left, but check out this Reddit thread with over 7000 comments - people share theirs regularly. Just sort the comments by ‘new’ and try your luck!