Chantal Caduff
Maximalist Collage Artist and Commercial Creative
Chantal Caduff creates vibrant, bold collage work spanning fashion, lifestyle, and social media industries. Her practice embodies what she calls a «maximus» aesthetic approach, characterized by colorful, high-impact visual compositions that challenge traditional boundaries between analog and digital creation.
Creative Philosophy
Caduff approaches collage as an intuitive recombination process: «Collage is very simple. It's just some random bits and bobs you find and you put them together in something new and create something interesting with it.» Her methodology involves deconstructing magazine pages, rearranging elements, and transforming them into «magical other kind of thing» through layered compositions.
AI Integration Strategy
Rather than viewing AI as disruptive, Caduff sees generative tools as natural extensions of her existing practice. She leverages AI's unpredictability for creative surprise: «You can say, like, generate some blue goo that looks like paint but is also used in a fashion magazine in the same way René Magritte would use it. And then suddenly it gives you something unexpected that you would have never, ever, ever been able to just come up on the spot.»
Commercial Applications
Caduff's commercial work demonstrates practical AI solutions to copyright constraints. While personal projects freely incorporate magazine imagery, client work requires copyright-cleared materials: «For commercial work that is often not possible due to copyright. So I need to use stock images, stock libraries, which is fine. It just kind of limits the creative process.» AI-generated elements solve this limitation, enabling her to create designer furniture, specific lighting, and targeted models that traditional stock photography cannot provide.
Industry Perspective
Her view on creative expertise emphasizes conceptual value over technical execution: «You can have stick figures and launch a national mobiliar campaign that is super successful... In the end, it doesn't matter how good of a drawer or how good your design is—your idea, your concepts, how you communicate with your audience.»
Animation and Motion
Caduff extends her static collage work into animated sequences using After Effects, creating manual animations rather than relying on AI video generation tools like Runway, maintaining hands-on control over motion design elements.
Key Insight: Caduff represents an enthusiastic, pragmatic approach to AI adoption that views generative tools as creative materials rather than replacements, successfully bridging traditional collage techniques with contemporary commercial demands.