Collage as a visual form predates the web by over a century. Picasso and Braque introduced papier colle in 1912, gluing newspaper and wallpaper into paintings. The Dadaists weaponized it — Hannah Hoch and Raoul Hausmann used photomontage to dismantle political narratives. Collage was always an act of recombination, of making new meaning from found material.
The zine movement of the 1970s-90s brought collage to punk and DIY culture. Cut-and-paste layouts, photocopied and stapled, became the visual language of communities too independent (or too broke) for professional printing. Riot Grrrl zines, punk flyers, and underground comics all spoke in collage.
On the web, collage aesthetics challenge the tyranny of the grid. CSS transforms, overlapping elements, and mixed typography recreate the energy of physical cut-and-paste in a digital medium. It is a reminder that the web does not have to be clean to be expressive — sometimes the most honest design is the one that looks like it was assembled at 2am with scissors and a glue stick.