Crafting a Photomosaic Dragon for Fortune’s China AI Feature
As an illustrator for tech, I recently had the privilege of creating a digital mosaic for FortuneMagazine’s special report on China’s AI industry. The artwork—a traditional Chinese dragon composed of 100+ tech logos—explores how photomosaic techniques can visualize complex ecosystems. This piece blends cultural symbolism (the dragon as an innovation metaphor) with technical precision, offering a template for storytelling about global tech landscapes.
The Fortune article examines China’s rapid AI advancements, spotlighting models like DeepSeek, Alibaba’s Qwen, and Tencent’s Hunyuan. My role was to translate this narrative into a single striking image, where each scale represents a company contributing to China’s collective rise in technology.
Video Glimpse
The accompanying video captures key moments—from sketching the dragon’s structure to assembling the digital mosaic—culminating in the surreal discovery of the printed feature at an Athens airport. At just under 3 minutes, it’s a condensed look at the process, set to an energetic soundtrack by BEJ48.
On Tools, AI, and Creative Freedom
As a designer working at the intersection of technology and art, my toolkit is deliberately hybrid. While I use commercial platforms like Adobe Firefly, Midjourney, or OpenAI's Sora for specific client needs, I increasingly rely on open-source alternatives—not just for cost efficiency, but for the creative freedom they enable. Tools like Stable Diffusion (with ComfyUI workflows), SeeDream, Black Forest Labs Flux, and HiDream offer something irreplaceable: uncensored exploration of ideas and granular technical control.
This isn’t about circumventing ethical boundaries—I don’t create explicit content. But as someone who studies the human form (from classical anatomy to modern sports photography), I find today’s excessive censorship of non-sexualized bodies absurd. When platforms censor swimmers or athletes under the guise of "safety," they ignore art’s centuries-old dialogue with human anatomy. Open-source models respect creators enough to let us decide where that line sits.
Chinese models (DeepSeek, Qwen, Hunyuan) and Western open-source tools (Mistral, Llama) now coexist in my daily workflow. Each has strengths: proprietary tools polish final outputs, while open-source options empower experimentation—whether tweaking LoRAs in Stable Diffusion or building custom pipelines in ComfyUI. For creative professionals, this duality isn’t just practical; it’s a philosophical stance against creativity gatekeeping.
You can read more about my approach to GenAI here.
The Bigger Picture for Editorial Design
Tech illustration today isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about visualizing systems (AI ecosystems, market trends) in ways that resonate across cultures. Projects like this Fortune feature remind me that our tools shape our metaphors, and our metaphors shape understanding.
To fellow creatives: How are you balancing proprietary and open-source tools in your workflow? I’d love to hear your approaches.