An archive of fun, stylish and retro collages created by brilliant BOYO Studio

Some budding young design talents fresh out of university might harbour resentment about being thrust into a new job at a design studio as a “photocopier boy” (his words), but Patrick Waugh is not one of them. Instead he took full advantage of the rich archive at his disposal in his earliest and most junior jobs to make copies. Lots of them. And then took a scalpel and some masking tape to them, and transformed them into something altogether more exciting.

These early manipulated images became the basis for BOYO, a fanzine of photographs taken by some of the most revered image-makers then starting out, and collaged by Patrick. In the following years, Patrick continued to create collages for BOYO alongside posts at ARENA HOMME +, (where he worked under the creative direction of Neville Brody and M/M Paris) and later at POP magazine. All the while, art directors at brands including Adidas, Missoni, Acne and Fashion East were picking up on his BOYO work and commissioning him to create spreads for print projects. As a result BOYO has grown out of an annual zine into an archive all of its own, with a presence in magazines including Wallpaper*, i-D and 032C and a huge list of collaborations.

It’s still something of a maverick operation, and it’s all the richer for it – beautiful men (plus the occasional woman) wearing beautiful clothes are chopped and distorted into unexpected new compositions to create spreads which are somehow retro and timeless all at the same time, and so much more exciting than a straight-up editorial. So let there never be a complaint about being relegated to photocopying ever again.