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DIGITAL HYPE, OLD-SCHOOL SATIRE🔥
What if an 18th-century satirist could see our digital world? I wanted to find out. I created a style inspired by vintage humorous caricatures, where exaggerated characters and lively hand-colored lines turn everyday chaos into comedy. From old-fashioned social mishaps to QR codes, smartwatches, and digital overload, the setting has changed but people are still wonderfully ridiculous. This style felt like the perfect way to bring historical satire back to life, one modern absurdity at a time.
Old caricature is the perfect language for digital hype. Funny series.
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Kalighat 2026: The Machines Are the New Babus
Kalighat paintings were cheap bazaar watercolours sold in 1880s Calcutta, and they were satire: they mocked the city's new rich, dandies who aped their British masters and lounged while servants fanned them.
I trained a Recraft V4 Style on five anonymous Kalighat sheets from the Cleveland Museum of Art and Wellcome Collection, keeping the bold single outline, flat colour and empty paper ground.
Then I turned the satire on 2026: the machines are the new babus. Phones smoke hookahs on velvet chairs, robot vacuums ride in palanquins, and humans fan, carry and groom their devices. Same masters, new hardware.
Social post: https://lnkd.in/p/gXJn_FQQ
OFF THE CUFF. Business on top. Personality underneath.
You know those businessmen who wear perfectly tailored suits, polished shoes, and then surprise you with the most colorful socks when they sit down? I've always loved that little detail. 😂
When I discovered Albert Racinet's L'Ornement Polychrome, a collection of beautiful ornamental designs published between 1869 and 1873, I immediately thought these patterns deserved a comeback.
So I imagined OFF THE CUFF, a fictional menswear accessories brand creating matching silk ties and colorful dress socks for gentlemen who take their careers seriously, but not necessarily themselves.
Using Racinet's historical illustrations from The Public Domain Review, I explored how these intricate 19th-century patterns could become a contemporary fashion collection through a custom Recraft Style.
The idea is to keep things elegant and understated above the desk, while letting a little personality show underneath it.
MIMESIS
What happens when fashion becomes part of a painting?
Inspired by 17th-century Dutch paintings from the Getty collection, I created a custom style in Recraft to explore the relationship between fashion, art, and visual perception.
From patterned floors to velvet curtains and spotted horses, each look blends into its surroundings, blurring the line between clothing and the world around it.
Created for the Contra × Recraft Archive Style Challenge.
