Once you enter the cheeky collaged world of Toon Joosen, you’ll want to take up permanent residence. The art director and visual designer based in the Netherlands creates immersive digital collages from salvaged vintage clippings and imagery, compositing the graphics together in playful, often humorous ways.
Joosen describes his work as having an “alienating retro atmosphere with a spark of humor.” His pieces often feature pages of type seemingly ripped out from books, with their words and sentences reworked to create the illusion of movement. Vintage figures sourced from magazines, postcards, paper, streetjunk, or Joosen’s own photography and drawings are integrated within these pages, interacting with the type.
“You can make fun quirks with collages. I like the alienating thing about it. Putting people on the wrong track,” explained Joon of his work. “I work very intuitively. I collect images and I have many ideas. Often my work consists of only 2 main elements. But they must come together well.”
His work might be tongue-in-cheek, but that doesn’t take anything away from Joosen’s masterful craftsmanship and clever world view. The eerie energy yet striking aesthetic that are inherent to retro advertisements is softened by the charm of Joosen’s imagination, as he toys with recontextualization in each piece.
Try not to be delighted, we dare you.