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Welcome to the Picturebook Makers blog - where the world's finest picturebook artists take you behind the scenes.

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Illustration research methods.  /  Gannon, Rachel  &  Fauchon, Mireille  (2021)

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Illustration research methods.  /  Gannon, Rachel  &  Fauchon, Mireille  (2021)

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Search - Leeds Arts University - Liberty

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BA Illustration reading list 2022/2023 (LAUIL511; LAUIL512)

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LITERARY FRICTION - GRAPHIC NOVELS W/ LIZZY STEWART

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LITERARY FRICTION - GRAPHIC NOVELS W/ LIZZY STEWART

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"Literary Friction is a conversation about books and ideas, hosted by friends Carrie and Octavia. Each month we interview an author about their book and build the show around a related theme – anything from resistance to coastlines to corpses. Listen in for lively discussion, book recommendations and a little music too."

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Literary Friction - Graphic Novels w/ Lizzy Stewart 18th October 2022

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Playing Talk. Literary Friction is a conversation about books and ideas, hosted by friends Carrie and Octavia. Each month we interview an author about their book and build the show around a related theme – anything from resistance to coastlines to corpses. Listen in for lively discussion, book recommendations and a little music too.

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Goodwin, A. (2021) Visiting Professional: Amy Goodwin. Ornamentation, 12 October

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Goodwin, A. (2021) Visiting Professional: Amy Goodwin. Ornamentation, 12 October

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Seamside (2023) HOW TO ACT UP with Banner-Maker Alice Gabb

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Seamside (2023) HOW TO ACT UP with Banner-Maker Alice Gabb

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I grew up in Southern Baptist churches sitting through long sermons and studying the banners hung around the sanctuary. Those hours spent as young person put down roots into my creative core that would come to bear several years later as an adult meaning-maker.

Alice Gabb's work fully embraces the lineage of the banner, but from an entirely different source: the social protest movements of the last century.

Her creative path is founded in years of calligraphy, and so, in many ways it was a natural and short jump to start making banners. In this conversation, Alice joins us from her new studio in East London, and we explore:

1. gathering poetry in everyday life

2. using color to tame hearts and minds

3. maintaining joy in the face of long and protracted struggle

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HOW TO ACT UP with Banner-Maker Alice Gabb - ZAK FOSTER

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I grew up in Southern Baptist churches sitting through long sermons and studying the banners hung around the sanctuary. Those hours spent as young person put down roots into my creative core that would come to bear several years later as an adult meaning-maker. Alice Gabb's work fully embraces the

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The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle , Cornwall Walk Through

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From: Murals & Illustrations / Specific to: Mural Artist / Placemaking

Mural Benefits

Painting murals can be an engaging form of public art that can have a positive impact on people and the community. Murals can transform dull and neglected urban spaces into vibrant, visually stunning areas that attract people.

HAPPY DECAY is an Australian mural artist who focuses on creating positive change in the public space. View his portfolio of mural art.

Here are some reasons why painting murals is important and how murals benefit the public:

Community Building Murals

Murals can be a way to bring people together and create a sense of community. Many murals are created through collaborative efforts that involve local artists, residents, and community organizations. This collaborative process can help to build relationships, foster a sense of ownership over public spaces, and inspire pride in the community.

Urban Beautification

Murals can beautify otherwise drab and neglected urban spaces. They can add colour, texture, and dimension to buildings, streets, and public areas, making them more inviting and visually appealing. This can improve the quality of life for the community and help attract visitors, which can have positive social and economic benefits for the community.

Mural Benefits of Historical and Cultural Expression

Murals can be used to express a community's history and culture. Many murals are painted to reflect the unique identity and values of a community, telling stories that are important to its residents. These murals can help to preserve local history and traditions, while also promoting a greater understanding and appreciation of different cultures.

Murals can Create Awareness

Murals can be used to raise awareness about social issues and promote social change. Many artists use murals to comment on issues like poverty, inequality, and discrimination, sparking important conversations about these topics. Murals can also inspire people to take action on issues that they care about.

Murals to Spark Imagination

Murals can inspire people to think creatively and express themselves in new ways. They can help to create a sense of wonder and magic in the urban environment, and encourage people to look at their surroundings with fresh eyes.

This particular approach can be very helpful in transforming school grounds that may have large areas of concrete and brick walls.

In conclusion, painting murals is an important form of public art that can profoundly impact communities. Murals can create a sense of community, beautify urban spaces, express historical and cultural identity, raise awareness about social issues, and inspire creativity and wonder. As such, they are a powerful tool for making cities more vibrant, engaging, and meaningful places to live.

This is outlined a few mural benefits to the community.

Back to: Murals & Illustrations

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Mural Benefits - Painting murals can be an engaging form of public art that can have a positive impact on people and the community.

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The Magic of Wall Mural Painting: Transforming Everyday Spaces

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Wall mural painting and the many benefits of transforming everyday spaces creatively through visual artwork.

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Comics, zines and print made by queer punx.

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Interviews with Radical Growers +Makers -CJ from Black Lodge Press

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Interviews with Radical Growers +Makers -CJ from Black Lodge Press

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"voises of marginalised groups...history of different social movements...power of direct action"

"design by chaos! I start with the text, and then fit images around it which I feel fit the theme and tone of the messages. I use a combination of drawn abstract images, found images from old books and postcards, and textures...edited and constructed in Pixelmator"

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Interviews with Radical Growers + Makers.

This new part of my blog is an excuse for me to reach out to people I admire and ask the personal burning questions I have, which wouldn't necessarily be appropriate under any other setting.

To start with a bang im featuring the brilliant CJ from Black Lodge Press. When I first came across CJ's beautiful political prints and posters I had a real heart beating, mind racing moment, I was immediately in love with his bold brilliant imagery and hungry to see more of it. it felt like the visual stimulus id been hunting for, each image more inspiring than the next. Im pretty sure you'll feel the same.

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Interviews with Radical Growers + Makers - CJ from Black Lodge Press - Rosanna morris

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Interviews with Radical Growers + Makers. This new part of my blog is an excuse for me to reach out to people I admire and ask the personal burning questions I have, which wouldn't necessarily be appropriate under any other setting.

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Black Lodge Press on the need for urgency in anti-fascism. Now Then Sheffield

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Black Lodge Press on the need for urgency in anti-fascism. Now Then Sheffield

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“You can’t put a 3,000 word essay on a banner”: Black Lodge Press on the need for urgency in anti-fascism

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The pressing importance of combating fascism, the place of radical politics and agitprop come together in this popular print project. Founder CJ Reay talks about its roots in queer art, protest and anarchism.

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The Radical Posters of a British Women’s Art Workshop

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The See Red Women’s Workshop, which ran from 1974 to 1990, began with a newspaper ad calling for female visual artists “to combat images of the ‘model woman.’”

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Surfers against sewage campaign

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Life in our seas is so diverse but that biodiversity is under threat. A recovered ocean will benefit all of us. But why is it needed now?

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Art and the Ocean | Ocean Culture | Ocean Conservation Trust

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Arts and culture have an important role to play in our work and help us to connect even more people to our Ocean in a way that is meaningful to them.

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Olivia Twist is a London based Illustrator, Arts facilitator and Lecturer who graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Visual Communication. Never not watching. © Olivia Mathurin-Essandoh All rights reserved

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Louis Netter

Reportage drawing

Vision and experience

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There are symbols all around us that we take for granted, like the lightning strike icon, which indicates that something is high voltage. Or a little campfire to indicate that something is flammable. Those icons are pretty obvious, but there are others that aren't so straightforward. Like, why do a triangle and a stick in a circle indicate "peace"? Where does the smiley face actually come from? Or the power symbol? We sent out the 99PI team to dig into the backstory behind some of those images you see every day.

The Peace Symbol by Emmett FitzGerald

Flag semaphore is often associated with the military, but semaphores are actually at the root of one of our most ubiquitous icons-the peace symbol. Historically, it had associations with conflicts. During the French Revolution, complex semaphore rigs facilitated fast official communication across the nation. But it wasn't until the Cold War that it became embedded as an iconic anti-war symbol.

Born in England during the first year of World War I, Gerald Holtom would grow up to become a conscientious objector in World War II. While working at the Ministry of Education in 1958, he designed an icon as a side project aligned with his beliefs - a nuclear disarmament logo for a protest march organized by the newly-formed Direct Action Committee against Nuclear War (DAC), supported by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).

The marchers would carry 500 copies of the new "peace symbol" along their 50-mile journey from London's Trafalgar Square to Britain's Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. In the first large-scale anti-nuclear march of its kind, protesters united under this symbol. They hoisted it on banners and placards and wore it on their clothing.

To those familiar with semaphore, the symbol would seem to contain a coded message - 'N' and 'D' standing for "nuclear" and "disarmament," made up of vertical line for the D and two downward-angled lines for the N. These overlaid signs are set within a simple circle.

According to Andrew Rigby, Emeritus Professor of Peace Studies at Coventry University in the United Kingdom, this symbol wasn't Holtom's first attempt. He considered a dove, but that had been appropriated by the Stalin regime to legitimize their work on the hydrogen bomb. He also thought about the Christian cross but realized it could be associated with crusaders and, more recently: the Western nation that dropped nuclear weapons, devastating Japan.

Holtom wanted to create something that could be universally adopted, without the symbolic baggage of fraught iconography. So, in a state of "deep despair," Holtom later wrote, "I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands [...] outstretched outwards and downwards. [....] I formalized the drawing into a line and put a circle round it. It was ridiculous at first and such a puny thing." It was to him as much a gesture of desperation as it was a work of design.

Even then, he wasn't sure it was the right solution, but he drew it out on a piece of paper then pinned it on his jacket and forgot about it. When a woman at the post office then asked him about it, he recalled, "I looked down in some surprise and saw the ND symbol pinned on my lapel. I felt rather strange and uneasy wearing a badge. 'Oh, that is the new peace symbol,' I said. 'How interesting, are there many of them?' 'No, only one, but I expect there will be quite a lot before long.'" Early versions produced and circulated for the CND look a bit more like abstracted persons - approaching the circle, the lines widen, suggesting a head toward the top and forward-leaning arms. They were also made of clay and handed out with a dark message: in case of a nuclear war, these may be the only artifacts that outlast the person wearing them.

The CND continued to use the design in the U.K., but the symbol also made its way around the world, and it came to symbolize peace more broadly. In the United States, a pacifist protester shined a spotlight on the symbol in 1958, hoisting it up on a small boat he piloted into a nuclear test zone. A few years later, a delegate from America's Student Peace Union (SPU) returned from a trip to Britain and convinced his group to adopt the symbol and distribute it on college campuses. Absent copyright, the symbol's usage has continued to expand over time. It has since been described as "probably the most powerful, memorable and adaptable image ever designed for a secular cause."
Holtom, though, came to question the negativity of the implied figure in his graphic, a reflection of his own mood at the time that also looked like the runic symbol for "death" (an inversion of the "life" rune). But he also realized something: if the symbol were inverted, it could look like a "tree of life," representing hope and optimism - and the upward-reaching arms could signify the letter U in semaphore. Coupled with the D, this flipped figure could stand for "unilateral disarmament," too, Holtom's ultimate dream.

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Ubiquitous Icons: Peace, Power, and Happiness - 99% Invisible

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There are symbols all around us that we take for granted, like the lightning strike icon, which indicates that something is high voltage. Or a little campfire to indicate that something is flammable. Those icons are pretty obvious, but there are others that aren't so straightforward.

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Explores research informing the character design. Contextual research and history to inform the work

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There are three ways to ultimate success:

The first way is to be kind.

The second way is to be kind.

The third way is to be kind.

Fred Rogers

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Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.

Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

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If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.

Fred Rogers

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We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say "It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem." Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.

Fred Rogers

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https://www.google.com/search?q=quotes+about+community&oq=quotes+about+community+&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQABiABDIHCAIQABiABDIHCAMQABiABDIHCAQQABiABDIHCAUQABiABDIHCAYQABiABDIHCAcQABiABDIHCAgQABiABDIHCAkQABiABDIHCAoQABiABDIHCAsQABiABDIHCAwQABiABDIHCA0QABiABDIHCA4QABiABNIBCDUxNTZqMGo5qAIOsAIB&client=ms-android-honor&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8&chrome_dse_attribution=1

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https://www.classy.org/blog/giving-quotes-inspire-nonprofit-community/#:~:text=“We cannot live only for,us with our fellow men.&text=“The greatness of a community,compassionate actions of its members.&text=“One of the marvelous things,we couldn't as individuals.

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https://www.classy.org/blog/giving-quotes-inspire-nonprofit-community/#:~:text=“We cannot live only for,us with our fellow men.&text=“The greatness of a community,compassionate actions of its members.&text=“One of the marvelous things,we couldn't as individuals.

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https://www.classy.org/blog/giving-quotes-inspire-nonprofit-community/#:~:text=“We cannot live only for,us with our fellow men.&text=“The greatness of a community,compassionate actions of its members.&text=“One of the marvelous things,we couldn't as individuals.

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50 Giving Quotes to Re-Energize Your Nonprofit Community

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Share these 50 giving quotes with your team and supporters to help re-energize your community of nonprofit employees, volunteers, and donors.

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https://www.classy.org/blog/giving-quotes-inspire-nonprofit-community/#:~:text=“We cannot live only for,us with our fellow men.&text=“The greatness of a community,compassionate actions of its members.&text=“One of the marvelous things,we couldn't as individuals.

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https://www.classy.org/blog/giving-quotes-inspire-nonprofit-community/#:~:text=“We cannot live only for,us with our fellow men.&text=“The greatness of a community,compassionate actions of its members.&text=“One of the marvelous things,we couldn't as individuals.

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iStock. Explore the official iStock website for millions of exclusive, royalty-free, stock files. Find the perfect stock for your project, fast. Search now.

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Getty Images UK. Find high resolution royalty-free images, editorial stock photos, vector art, video footage clips and stock music licensing at the richest image search photo library online.

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Shanghai's Creative Uprising: Behind China's Great Firewall

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Shanghai's Creative Uprising: Behind China's Great Firewall

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~using music and fashion to express themselves in shanghai

~"artists and creative are determined to mark their mark regardless of authority's resorictions"

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Shanghai's Creative Uprising: Behind China's Great Firewall

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The Radical Roots Of DIY Fashion Have Never Been More Relevant 

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The Radical Roots Of DIY Fashion Have Never Been More Relevant 

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The Radical Roots Of DIY Fashion Have Never Been More Relevant

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The Radical Roots Of DIY Fashion Have Never Been More Relevant

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Interpersonal care and art share a profound connection, as both emphasize the importance of human connection and emotional expression. Interpersonal care focuses on nurturing relationships and promoting well-being through empathetic and attentive interactions, while art therapy leverages creative expression to facilitate emotional growth and healing.

**Interpersonal Art Psychotherapy**

Studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of interpersonal art psychotherapy in treating aggression in individuals with learning disabilities in secure care settings. This approach combines art-making with psychotherapeutic techniques to promote emotional regulation, social skills, and self-expression. Trained art therapists, registered with the UK Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), provide manualized interpersonal art psychotherapy, ensuring treatment fidelity and adherence to established protocols.

**Meaning Making: Art as Acts of Care**

The "Meaning Making – Art as Acts of Care" project highlights the significance of art in capturing the intangible aspects of caregiving. This initiative, led by multimedia performance artist and carer Danica Knezevic, translates the experience of caring into art and social spaces. By engaging with the unspoken and deep interpersonal connections embedded in care, this project honors the value of time, presence, and connection in community well-being.

**Role of Art Therapy in Mental Health**

Research has shown that art therapy can improve mental health by allowing individuals to express themselves more freely, fostering interpersonal relationships, and promoting emotional regulation. Active participation in the arts has been linked to improved mental health outcomes, highlighting the potential benefits of incorporating art therapy into mental health interventions.

**Interpersonal Arts: A Holistic Approach**

Interpersonal Arts, as defined by the Interpersonal Arts Institute, integrates theories of evolution, attachment, interpersonal neurobiology, and systemic-relational theory to promote healthy relationships. This approach emphasizes the importance of mastering interpersonal skills and abilities, recognizing that our mental and physical health are deeply influenced by our relationships. By combining theoretical knowledge with practical methodology, Interpersonal Arts aims to enable individuals to build and sustain healthy relationships, fostering joy, satisfaction, and overall well-being.

In conclusion, interpersonal care and art are intertwined, as both prioritize human connection and emotional expression. By combining art therapy with interpersonal care, we can create a more comprehensive approach to promoting mental health, well-being, and social skills.

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Interpersonal care and art share a profound connection, as both emphasize the importance of human connection and emotional expression. Interpersonal care focuses on nurturing relationships and promoting well-being through empathetic and attentive interactions, while art therapy leverages creative expression to facilitate emotional growth and healing. Interpersonal Art Psychotherapy Studies have …

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The Complexities of Interpersonal Relationships

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Kate Nelson, a sculptor from Austin, Texas, considers herself a “lucky girl” indeed. “I figured out what I wanted to do with my life and got to it,” she simply says. Having …

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Art is a great way to spread ideas and give voice to the community, especially in the 21st century when global communication has become an integral part of our lives. The Internet has made it possible for artists to connect with people from all over the world and instantly distribute their content.

One way art impacts the community is through its ability to inspire social change. Art allows people to express themselves in ways that may not be possible in everyday life. A person stuck in a hopeless job or an abusive relationship may turn to a novel to express their feelings. A working artist may paint pictures of hope at a time when everyone else feels defeated and hopeless. By expressing their strong emotions through art, they may feel less alone with their experiences and more motivated to improve their lives and their society.

Artists have the power to change society because they can evoke emotional responses from their audiences. From billboards to viral videos, from public art to fine art, to music, every individual artist has the ability to reach millions

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Artists play an important role in the development of the human experience. They record their time, share their stories and ideas, express their feelings, and have influence.

Surely you have heard of Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, or Andy Warhol, who have been called groundbreaking artists in art history. And despite their importance to the community art scene and society, they are not the only ones creating socially relevant work.
All over the world, there are countless artists who believe in the power of their art to bring about positive change in our society.
Art Is a Way of Communication

In an increasingly globalized world, people need to be able to communicate with each other easily.
These days, whether you're in New York, San Francisco, New Orleans or abroad, new technologies allow us to connect faster than ever before, but despite our best efforts to communicate, we often feel like we do not understand each other. We find it difficult to see things from the other person's perspective.
The arts offer us the opportunity to understand the other person's perspective and even our own. They offer a new perspective on life and help us find our own voice. They also teach us to appreciate life in a different way than we could with words alone.

The Importance of the Arts to Culture and Community Development

The arts can be a positive economic factor, especially in urban areas. They also contribute to the preservation of history, whether through music, dance, or visual art.

The arts are a catalyst for education, bringing people from different cultures together to learn to express themselves through song and dance or painting and drawing.
What artists have to say plays a critical role in our society. The arts can be a driving force behind political movements and social change. It can help us understand and appreciate other cultures, especially when they are too far away to visit.
Arts and culture practitioners want to be part of the solution - a solution that not only enriches their own circles, but also helps strengthen and develop the communities in which they and their audiences live, work, and play.

Art Has a Healing Power

Art is not only great for culture, education, communication between different cultures, or improving a creativity creative skill, art also has healing power.

Mental health is a major concern for young people.
Artistic practice and creativity are definitely healthy activities, whether it is visual art or music. Art therapy is used for creative youth development and expression, as well as for healing depression.
How Do the Arts Help the Community in the 21st Century?

Art is a great way to spread ideas and give voice to the community, especially in the 21st century when global communication has become an integral part of our lives. The Internet has made it possible for artists to connect with people from all over the world and instantly distribute their content.
In a globalized world where technology is the primary means of communication, artists can have an even greater impact on society by raising awareness of social issues and inspiring people to take action.
Communities around the world can be strengthened through various art forms, including music, theater, and fine art. In a globalized world where technology is the main vector of communication, artists can have an even greater impact on society by raising awareness of social issues and inspiring people to take action. There are several ways that art impacts the community.

Related: Are Artists Born or Made

Art Inspires Social Change

One way art impacts the community is through its ability to inspire social change. Art allows people to express themselves in ways that may not be possible in everyday life. A person stuck in a hopeless job or an abusive relationship may turn to a novel to express their feelings. A working artist may paint pictures of hope at a time when everyone else feels defeated and hopeless. By expressing their strong emotions through art, they may feel less alone with their experiences and more motivated to improve their lives and their society.
Art is also a very powerful tool for community development. Because it requires physical contact, public art projects bring people from diverse backgrounds together to achieve common goals, such as preserving national endowment, art history, culture, or advocating for social justice.
In recent decades, artists have used their voices to fight for many issues: racial discrimination, gender inequality, LGBT rights, hunger, violence against women, climate change, and many others.
Artists have the power to change society because they can evoke emotional responses from their audiences. From billboards to viral videos, from public art to fine art, to music, every individual artist has the ability to reach millions of people and make them think about important social issues.
Art Promotes the Development of Skills

Creating art requires skill development that can benefit community development by improving the recruitment and retention of local businesses.
Communities that provide public funding for arts education programs or creative youth development, for example, can expect fewer students to drop out of school because they have more opportunities to develop self-esteem and take pride in their accomplishments.
How Artists Can Help the World

Whether you are a global or local artist, a musician, a visual artist, or an actor, you have a special ability to reach people through your creativity. Through their art, they can tell stories that resonate in society and inspire people to action.
Artists can help the world by joining communities and helping them raise awareness about important issues.
It is important for artists to educate themselves about the issues they advocate for, as their influence is usually much greater than that of most individuals. The more research an artist does, the better they understand what is going on in the world and the better they can make a difference.

Artists should also be aware of their influence on others.

Artists who engage in illegal or harmful behavior could be sending the wrong message to their fans. For example, artists who drink alcohol and drive might unintentionally encourage their audience to do the same. If an artist engages in good causes but engages in bad behavior, it could create confusion among their fans about what is right and what is wrong.

What Are the Benefits for Artists?

As an artist, when you start helping communities, you will soon find that your art will also benefit from your efforts. This is because you or your work will be seen as making a difference in the lives of others. When you make a difference in the lives of others, they will see your work as something that has changed their lives as well.
You may be able to receive grants and funding for your work if you use it to help communities or work toward a social goal.
In addition, if you become known for your community involvement, you may be hired by companies or individuals to do work that positively impacts their communities.
When people know that you care about the community and that you want to make a difference in their lives, they will respect you not only for what you do but also for who you are. More people will want to buy your artwork if they know it is helping others and not just hanging on someone's wall.
As an artist who wants to help a community, there are many ways to get started. You can volunteer your time, donate money or artwork, and even sell your artwork at fundraisers and other events to raise money for charities or environmental projects.

How Can You Promote Art in Your Community?
The best promotion is when you do not try to promote in the first place.
If you advertise to the community with goodwill, the community will likely advertise to you because you are a giver. Takers are usually not the most successful.

Here are 5 tips on how you can take action and benefit from doing good:

Collaborate with other artists or community members. The more people you can get involved and excited about your project, the better.

Be an active member of the community. Do not just show up when you want something; be there for everyone else and befriend people who are not artists (and artists who can not help you yet). Comment on the community's social media posts, tag the community. Community engagement is cultural organizations or community groups will definitely make people more curious about you and your artwork.

Participate in events that are not specifically related to art. Even if they are not remotely related to your creative activity, they help people get to know and like you as a person.

Make yourself useful to community groups/culture in general; offer your skills/knowledge to other artists for free; offer to volunteer at events that are not your own. The more involved you are, the better known and liked you will be by other community members (who may one day become mentors, or even patrons).

Become an official member or Make a donation. If you can afford it, a donation always helps communities with their activities and operating costs.

How Do You Make Friends in the Arts Community?

Local artists can get involved in the local arts scene (art fairs, city hall art exhibitions, local cultural organizations).

Learn a new art form by taking art classes

Volunteer for rural communities

Teach a skill

Share your studio space with other artists from your local community

Help with an exhibition or participate in a group show

Join the local arts organization or a nonprofit organization which you could help out with your creative expression

Attend meetings, or write them a note expressing your interest and asking for more information about their activities.

Most local community art organizations have Facebook pages, support them on social media.

In the global community art scene it is different because it would be expensive and time and energy-consuming to meet people locally.

However, there are many ways to get involved:

Start by Joining the Conversation

The best way is to engage on social media and comment, share and post there. This way, you'll make friends and learn about upcoming events and online exhibitions. Start following the artists that catch your eye.

Do Not Wait for Your Work to Be "Good Enough"

If you want feedback on your work, share it! Getting involved in the community can be an amazing learning experience. You will get better at what you do. So do not wait until you consider yourself an artist to show your work.

Participate in Their Events

I have a whole list of websites that host events where people can meet and draw together in real-time. I myself host such events in the World Citizen Artists Community. You can also find community events on Eventbrite, Meetup, Linkedin, etc.

Where should you start looking for an artist community?

Find a Community That You Want to Be a Part Of

Find a community or arts organization, where you feel comfortable. If you want to help a particular nonprofit organization, take some time to get to know the community and its members before you actively apply there. You do not want to come off as someone who is just there for self-promotion. You need to be a part of the community before you can successfully promote yourself.

Join the World Citizen Artists Community

The World Citizen Artists (WCA) Community is a space where artists, as well as leaders and experts, young people, and other community members can come together and collaborate for a better world.
Its purpose is to help socially engaged artists better understand and promote social issues so that when they present their art in support of a cause they care about, they receive support from the community.
The socially engaged community art organization has partnered with well-known organizations and artists, as well as emerging artists who support social causes. There is sure to be something for everyone from public art, to visual art, music, and more!
The community is open to all and is by no means exclusive and it highlights all sustainable development goals. It is a space where we hope people will rally around the shared values of promoting peace and equality through art and culture.
Artists draw inspiration from their own experiences, life stories, and social issues that affect them directly or indirectly, as well as from what other people (artists or non-artists) are doing. The World Citizen Artists Community is designed for socially engaged artists who are concerned with social issues, and new members are always welcome!

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A lot of the art stickers beckoned the question “to ponder the sticker as a means of expression and communication for an individual, instead of just representing a band, company, or movement.

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Stickers rule. When I pause to think about it, stickers have changed my life. It is hard to believe that paper and vinyl with adhesive backing can do so much. Repetition works, and stickers are a perfect medium to demonstrate this principle. As long as stickers are being put up faster than they weather or are cleaned, they are accumulating. For cities, it is a constant maintenance battle. Simple fact is, it's a lot easier to put stickers up than to clean them off. People also seem unable to resist the urge to stick them on their belongings, car, stereo, skateboard, guitar, and the list goes on. What's on stickers doesn't even have to be that cool, they still manage to make their way into every nook and cranny on the planet.

What's the deal with stickers anyway? This article is supposed to be about stickers in the context of graffiti (more clearly defined as "aerosol art"), but the relevance of stickers extends far beyond just the graff world. Literally defined, by Webster's, Graffiti means an inscription or drawing, message or slogan, made on some public surface. Under this broad definition, almost all stickers seen in public could be considered graffiti.

I'm not sure whether this article is supposed to be a more academic discussion, but I'm providing my history with stickers because it is very relevant to my point of view. My introduction to stickers as graffiti was not through the aerosol art graffiti scene. I grew up in South Carolina where graffiti was non-existent with the exception of the usual "Darnell loves Shanice" or "Go Bobcats." I did however; start to notice skateboard and punk rock stickers here and there as soon as I took interest in these two things at the beginning of 1984. Since my friends were into punk and skateboarding as passing fads, only momentarily distracting them from their paths as respectable preps, I found sticker sightings an encouraging sign that there were more dedicated proponents of punk and skate culture lurking somewhere in the city. Stickers were evidence that I wasn't living in a total void. I wanted stickers as badges of my culture. At first I would just buy skate stickers and put them on my stuff. I couldn't even figure out how to get punk stickers, so I learned how to draw all the band logos. Then my mom bought a copier for the business she ran out of our house. It was on, now I could copy graphics from the skate mags and my album covers onto Crack n Peel and make my own stickers. Pretty soon everything I owned was covered with them. At the same time I was making paper-cut stencils of skate and band logos for spray paint and silkscreen application. These activities continued through high school, less as a way to make art than as a way to avoid actually having to pay for stickers and t shirts, many of which were not available in S. C. anyway. Besides, my parents had expressed their dislike of anything skate or punk related and would provide no financial support for additions to my wardrobe in these categories.

*Interesting side note: At this time, I still had not had real contact with "wild style" graffiti, with the exception of attending an art summer program with David Ellis, a.k.a. SKWERM, who would go on to start the acclaimed Barn Stormers graffiti project. At art camp, SKWERM was obsessed with tagging on everything, and showing off flicks of NYC and graff he'd done on barns. I didn't understand his passion for graff or NYC and made fun of him by signing my name on his message board with a bunch of arrows coming off it. He soon explained to me that I was a "toy" and needed to "step off". I was amused by his behavior at the time, but would get it later. In 1988 I moved to Providence, RI to attend the Rhode Island School of Design. I immediately linked up with all the punks and skaters. Stencils and stickers were business as usual, but with the addition of some more personalized alterations of the graphics I would rip-off. Providence had a tremendous art and music scene compared to what I was used to, and stickers were everywhere. There were tons of band stickers, political cause stickers (mostly college activists), and most interesting to me, a few art stickers and "hello my name is" tag stickers. A lot of the art stickers beckoned the question "to ponder the sticker as a means of expression and communication for an individual, instead of just representing a band, company, or movement. For years I had defined myself through associations with things that represented skate and punk culture. This path to forming an identity appealed in high school, but did little to alleviate the existential problem of anonymity once I had left high school and entered into an art school environment full of "alternative" people just like me. I liked the idea of having my own sticker, but couldn't think of something clever enough to be worth executing. I looked at it almost as seriously as getting a tattoo. I paid very close attention to stickers and I would try to figure out who and what was behind any sticker that I saw. I even started photographing flyers, stickers, and other forms of graffiti. During a museum trip to New York that freshman year of college, I saw graffiti in risky places that gave me new respect for the dedication of the writers. Stickers and tags coated every surface in New York City. I left the city inspired, but I was somehow convinced graffiti was something you had to be born into, like a Black or Hispanic mafia, and a pale cracker like me could never be accepted in that culture. I did however, think that I could make stickers and accomplish some of the same things.

That summer I was working at a skate shop called The Watershed. The boss liked my homemade t-shirts and asked me to design some stickers and tees for the store. I was amazed; people actually liked my crude "Team Shed" designs more than the stuff my boss had made professionally. This provided some artistic validation, but I was still looking for my own thing. Everything fell into place somehow when my friend Eric asked me to teach him how to make paper cut stencils. I stumbled upon a funny picture of Andre the Giant, and I told Eric that Team Shed was "played" and he should make a stencil of Andre so we could be Andre's "posse". He tried to cut the image with an x-acto knife, but aborted the mission in frustration. I finished the job and wrote, "Andre the Giant has a Posse" on one side with his height and weight, 7'4″, 520 lbs., on the other side. The first Giant sticker was born, with many more to come. The Andre stickers started as a joke, but I became obsessed with sticking them everywhere both as a way to be mischievous and also put something out in the world anonymously but that I could call my own. Just as I had been made curious by many of the many stickers I'd seen, I now had my own sticker to taunt and/or stimulate the public. The sticker takeover of Providence only took that summer. The next fall the local indie paper printed a picture of the sticker offering a reward to the person who could reveal its source and meaning. The sticker campaign had worked so quickly locally, that I decided to strike out for Boston and New York, both within driving distance. The ball had begun to roll but the amazing thing is that I almost lacked the self-confidence to try to put something of my own out there. I didn't even think I could make an impact in Providence and it is somewhat of a fluke that the Giant sticker stimulated me to try. However, once the first domino fell, I was addicted and had my sights set on world domination through stickers.

It amazed me just how liberating and easy stickering was. At first I would just run off a few hundred stickers a week at a copy center, using their sticker material. Then I figured out that I could get sticker material at an office supply store for half the price. Paper stickers were good for indoor use, a nightmare to remove, but weathered too quickly outdoors. I was taking some screen-printing classes, so I decided to look into making vinyl stickers. I bought vinyl ink and vinyl from a screen print supply wholeseller in Boston. The vinyl ink was ill toxic, but by printing them myself, the vinyl stickers worked out to be way cheaper than the paper ones. I also liked the confusion factor with having a low-fi image printed on the more professional vinyl material. Every sheet of stickers I printed felt like I was making the world a little smaller, I mean, all those stickers were gonna end up somewhere. The only thing that sucked was cutting the sheets into individual stickers. At first I used scissors, but then I gave in and bought a paper cutter and would just watch a movie and cut stickers. This process of production continued from '89 to '96, yielding over a million hand printed and cut stickers. When I moved to California, I decided I needed to keep the brain cells I had left, so I stopped printing with vinyl ink and started sending my stickers out to a printer.

As my production methods improved, so did my distribution. I began sending stickers to several enthusiastic friends who had caught sticker fever.

As my production methods improved, so did my distribution. I began sending stickers to several enthusiastic friends who had caught sticker fever. Some writers only want their stickers to track their actual footsteps. For example, I printed some stickers for Phil Frost and he got mad at me for putting them up for him. Phil got a call from Twist reporting that he'd seen some Frost stickers in San Francisco and asked if he'd been there. Phil figured I'd put them up and told me he only wanted his stickers on the street as a document of where he'd traveled. I just wanted my stickers to go as far and wide as possible, so I would supply stickers to my friends who lived all over the country. I also began to run cheap classified ads in Slap skateboard magazine and the punk zine Flipside. The ads just had my images and said, "Send a self-addressed stamped envelope for stickers and the lowdown." I was building a great grassroots network of people who wanted stickers. The only problem was that I was losing money on all of the stickers and ads. The stickers were always intended as an art project, and part of the charm was that there was nothing for sale, but I had to make some money back to keep producing. My solution was to ask for a mandatory donation of five cents per sticker (a price I basically maintain for black and white stickers to this day) and to produce some t-shirts to sell. That's how my humble sticker and t shirt business got started. Almost every art and financial opportunity in my life has stemmed from my stickers and their poster and stencil relatives.

So, there's more to my specific experience with stickers than that, but I've also developed a general overview of the sticker scene and made friends along the way who have opinions about stickers. Because I'm not an O.G. graff guy, I had to get the lowdown on stickers in graff prior to my introduction to the scene in 1989. Who better an authority to call than Zephyr, one of the pioneers of wild style graffiti and the man behind the "Wild Style" movie logo letters. According to Zephyr, no one in New York bombed stickers back in the day because piecing and tagging were so much easier then. Plus, the focus was more on the huge pieces on the outsides of trains. Zeph says the first stickers that started popping up a lot were commercially offset printed stickers that said "Why not?" He says, "The stickers were annoying but effective. The guy would put them up all over the runners of the trains. Ask Lee or any of the writers from that era They'll remember, Why not? Even if writers were irritated at first by sticker guys jocking their spots, eventually stickers became part of the writer's arsenal. Zephyr credits Revs and Cost with really demonstrating the power of the sticker (and paste-up) mediums in New York, and I would agree with him. Revs and Cost had mass-produced stickers and Xeroxed flyers on almost every crosswalk box in the city between 1991 and 1995. Their level of coverage was unprecedented, and their irritation to the city changed clean-up policies, insuring that such domination could never be achieved again. Revs and Cost approached promoting themselves through stickers seemingly less as typical graffiti than as a brand. They used bold, readable, no-frills type. The technique may not have been that stylish, but it was very effective, earning Revs and Cost the distinction of being two of the only writers whose names were well known outside of the graffiti community. My approach definitely takes cues from Revs and Cost, as well as the worlds of advertising and propaganda. I learned from Revs and Cost that simplicity and ubiquity can cut through all the visual noise and urban clutter. I attempted to take things one step further by using consistent color stories and icons on multiple sticker designs to allow people to experience a lot of repetition mixed with a little diversity to keep things intriguing.

Here is what a few other relative authorities have to say about stickers:

Dalek - Graffiti writer, known for his space monkeys

#1 Stickers are a great way to meet people.
#2 I like stickers because they are fun to slap all over the place.
#3 It is a great way to get your imagery out all over the world.
#4 People love stickers.
#5 I like to collect stickers. They are like toys...or trading cards.
#6 It's like getting up.
#7 They look good in bathroom stalls.
#8 They are easier to carry about than a can of flat black.
#9 I just want to be like Shepard Fairey.
#10 Beats wheat pasting.
#11 They are great for taping up boxes.
#12 Can be used to get the lint off of my black shirts.

Giant One - Graffiti writer and tattoo artist

"I see stickers as one of the many mediums I can use to get up. The main reason I've always liked them is the fact that I can put them up during the day without much hassle. They're also nice because they're generally small and quick to apply. I certainly don't think it's important for writers to make stickers, but it can be a fun medium. Twist made great stickers. Bob Licky stickers are legendary. Shygirl put up a lot of nice stickers in SF. Geso used to make big stickers out of a few smaller ones, which I always thought was a great idea. I put a few hundred stickers in Japan last week. BNE was running Tokyo with his stickers. I saw lots of Andre the Giant stickers too, as expected".

Roger Gastman - Graffiti writer and publisher of While You Were Sleeping magazine.

From a graffiti writers stand point. "Stickers are just another tool in a graffiti writer's arsenal. Another medium that works on all most any surface. My sticker captures the eye of the average person that might not notice your tags and throw-ups." from a marketing stand point "Branding is the most important thing for a company. It doesn't matter if the company is a start up or has been around for 100 years. Logo and name recognition is invaluable. Stickers create a very inexpensive and easy way to get that done."

Dave Kinsey - Artist and graphic designer, partner in BLKMRKT DESIGN.
"I like stickers because they leave a mark that can affect a persons mood, cause thought, and inspire a reaction. I like that my stickers become part of the movement of the street, absorbed by the population."

Conclusion

Having talked to several people, the general consensus was that stickers are cheap, effective, and easier and less risky to put up than tags, throw-ups, etc... However, opinions differ drastically as to what sticker techniques are "keepin' it real". Some people feel that just like racking paint, stickers should be stolen. Whether it's taking priority mail stickers from the post office, labels from FedEx or the airlines, or lifting "Hello my name is" joints from office supply stores, stickers can be acquired with the only cost being a potential shoplifting record. I prefer to take my risks installing the actual art, but for some people shoplifting is just part of the art of getting over. A lot of graff purists also feel that every sticker needs to be hand drawn and that printing stickers is cheating. People like Twist and Zephyr have printed their own variations of the "Hello my name is" sticker; Twist's being an oversized version, Zephyr's saying, "o hell my name is", but they still hand tagged each sticker. Other people merely use the "Hello my name is" template as a stylistic nod to graffiti iconography. Jest, for example, produces a "Who the fuck is jest" screen-printed sticker which uses old English text where the tag would normally go. Jest has put his time in, and doesn't have to prove his hand style by tagging every sticker. Some people, like Giant One, just consider making individual stickers an art form. Giant says, "Even when I'm just tagging on stickers, I take the time to make it tight. If I fuck up a tag I throw it in the trash. Everything I put up on the street should maintain that level of technical quality, from stickers to wild styles." The game with graff is balancing getting up like mad, with a flavorful delivery. It could be argued that even if hand made stickers have the flavor, it's too time consuming to make enough of them to really crush it. Some dedicated individuals have proven this incorrect. Twist always had San Francisco and any other city he spent more than a couple days in, on handmade sticker lockdown, not to mention tags and pieces. Pez, a bike messenger, has crushed every city he's lived in with tag stickers. Serch One, Cult crew LA , has a unique method of using spray paint and stencils with hand tagged accents on his stickers. His stickers are more up in every part of Los Angeles than anyone else, graffiti or commercial. I met him once and asked him how he did it. He said, "I take the bus."

The art of stickers isn't just about what is on them, but also how they are integrated into the environment. The most common placement is poles and crosswalk boxes at eye level. These are also the fastest places to be cleaned. Climbing a couple feet higher really weeds out the city workers and vigilante citizens who aren't dedicated to their jobs. Slightly bigger stickers are great for these high spots. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? I got so sick of my stickers being peeled that I looked into the kind of vinyl that the government uses for registration stickers so they can't be stolen off of license plates. The stuff is called destructible vinyl and flakes off in teeny pieces when you try to peel it. It costs about twice as much but is very worth it in some cleaner cities. People have come up with other great ideas like the tags on the adhesive side of the sticker stuck on the inside of newspaper boxes facing out. Making stickers that are camouflaged keeps them running too. In New York, locksmiths put small contact info stickers in all the doorways. ESPO made some of his own that blend right in, to most of the public, but stand out to writers. I have made take offs subverting the typical "You are under surveillance" stickers. They look so official; they usually stay up, even in conspicuous places. I also made fake California Department of Weights and Measures stickers like the ones that go on all the gas pumps. They only change them once a year. The possibilities with sticker placement are endless.

The fact is, if you want to make stickers but aren't, then you're just lazy. Hand drawn stickers are time consuming but free. Photocopied stickers can be made in small quantities, I used to get my fix just making a couple bucks worth at a time. Offset printed stickers on a roll with standardized shapes are super cheap if you do a bunch of them. Screen printed stickers have expensive set-up costs, but if you split up a sheet with friends and make only square or rectangular shapes that don't have to be die cut, you can bring the cost down per person, especially when you run volume. Ask the printers about volume price-breaks. In my opinion, stickers are the most effective promotional tool possible for the price. Don't sleep on 'em.

Shepard Fairey
May 2003
Published in Graphotism Magazine

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Stickers rule. When I pause to think about it, stickers have changed my life. It is hard to believe that...

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Artist creates stickers, uses multiple mediums/mixed media

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Capitalism runs on scarcity, and I think care promotes abundance…

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"positive imagery and messages that move us forward and can act as the compass pointing to a future we want to live in."

"There is no formula, but really simple is always best. I often tell people we’ve done workshops with to keep it to three to seven words. It should be something you can really see out of the side of your eye, walking down the street, that literally stops you in the street. If it doesn’t stop you, it didn’t work. You’ve got to be able to read it, visually read it, in a fraction of a second."

"I normally suggest sticking to two to three colors when you’re first starting out. Then think through the symbology. What is the imagery that goes with the words? There’s a lot of opportunity there to layer in symbolism. Maybe not everyone will understand, but it will really be meaningful to the people who do."

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On turning up marginalized voices with activist art

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Amplifier’s Cleo Barnett and Aaron Huey on making positive propaganda, collaborating with communities, turning artists into activists, and engaging authentically.

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In the months bridging our society out of an extraordinary year of revolutionary caregiving, Asian Arts Initiative will present public programming and an interactive showcase of mutual aid initiatives led by Black, Indigenous and other People of Color in the city of Philadelphia.

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Artists and activists share advice for making political posters, broadsides, zines, and stickers.

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"On messaging, one, keep it to as few words as possible. You really have to go over every word and ask why it’s there and whether it’s going to be compelling. You don’t have people’s attention for very long, whether you’re making posters, stickers—which I’ve done for other projects—or something on the internet. You have people for a brief moment.

The question is, “What can you insert into the reader’s brain that’s going to actually plant a seed and maybe grow into something else?” Most people who see it aren’t going to remember it or register it, but you want some percentage of people to absorb the message in a way that sticks with them."

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On finding the words for crisis and making the planet feel personal

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Environmental activist Jon Leland on designing public interventions, personalizing abstract ideas, and why social othering hurts our chances of beating back the effects of climate change.

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https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1A3nc21y37JXeei5_vhanKaILvuBRBnc6

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https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18Y-HJkneavhtRpbwdoQgUUuHghgUI5IY

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https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ABl75CbtIx3xbDN16f90Kej4cdkupKS_

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https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AL9K5K2Fz3MlzTXfYxMeYNhesapivgP0

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Hookedblog - Street Art from London and beyond

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While the city streets may have been somewhat quieter over the last few months while the UK was in lockdown, many street and graffiti artists continued to work outdoors, painting murals, installing street art paste-ups, and sticking up stickers on the street.

Stick it up: Shoreditch Street Art Stickers
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The Stick it up: Street art stickers is our ongoing series of blog posts, sharing photographs of the London street art and graffiti stickers that we discovered on our travels stuck up around the city with a focus on the Brick Lane and Shoreditch areas of East London.

'Love thy Neighbour' typographic sticker art by London-based street artist The Skeleton Cardboard.

Featured Street Artists
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Pictured below is a gallery of images is our tenth collection of Shoreditch street art stickers, featuring sticker art from artists D*Face, My Cute Creatures, The Skeleton Cardboard, RXskulls, Bazzagramz, Y A Y A, Craig Robertson aka Purshon, LdashD, Pinko Ponko, and a number of other street artists whose names we are not 100% sure on.

As with our previous collections of sticker art, the stickers featured here were all photographed in and around the ever-changing neighbourhoods of Shoreditch and Brick Lane in East London.

If anyone is able to identify the street artists in the unnamed sticker artworks featured be sure to let us know the artists' names and we will update the post. Feel free to drop their names in the comments sections below or email us.

'Bored of Everything' black and white sticker art by London-based street artist The Skeleton Cardboard.

My Cute Creatures red devil full-colour vinyl stickers on Brick Lane, London.

My Cute Creatures Shoreditch street art stickers
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My Cute Creatures is the name of a Bristol-based tattoo and street artist who has been working under the alias "My Cute Creatures" for her street art creations.

We have previously featured the street artist's vibrant London sticker work and continue to discover new sticker pieces on the London streets from this prolific sticker artist.

We have yet to see two of the same sticker design in Shoreditch from the artist, each of the full-colour vinyl stickers shared here featuring some of her cute creatures!

Still hanging in there, this vinyl sticker from artist My Cute Creature is still just about visible.

Cuteness overload in these vibrantly coloured Shoreditch street art stickers by artist My Cute Creature.

"Unknown' black and white skeleton sticker.

London stickers in Shoreditch from banana-obsessed artist Bazzagramz, as well as the stickers pictured we have seen a number of the artists small scale street sculptures also featuring their banana characters.

We are liking these geometric paper stickers by an artist calling themselves LdashD, pictured above and below.

One of the PINKY PONKO stickers, Pinko Ponko is a little pink Mousedogpigfox!

"Ban This" is a series of Shoreditch street art stickers from London artist D*face on Sclater Street, London.

London artist D*Face
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London-based artist D*Face's stickers have been a regular fixture on the East London streets for well over a decade with his D-dog stickers adorning lampposts and every other street sign across London city.

With the artists' gallery Stolen Space and his studio based in East London, there is a high concentration of his stickers around Shoreditch and Brick Lane.

Vinyl black and white skull stickers from London artist D*Face on Bacon Street, London.

"It's Cool To Be Kind" London sticker artwork by illustrator and artist Y A Y A aka Your alright you are.

We are loving the vibrant colours in these stickers pictured above and below featuring the work of Edinburgh artist Craig Robertson aka Purshone. Both were photographed in Shoreditch, London.

Unknown artist. London.

Sticker work from the prolific Portland-based street artist RXskull who prints all his own vinyl stickers.

The sticker work of London-based artist and subvertiser Illustre Feccia.

Shoreditch Street Art Stickers on Film
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Alongside the latest collection of Shoreditch street art stickers pictured in the post above, we also captured some short video clips and have compiled them together this is our second short London Street Art - Shoreditch Stickers clip shared both here and over on our Hookedblog Youtube channel.

As we have mentioned before we were a little late to the whole YouTube thing but will continue sharing our short video clips on that platform, so feel free to subscribe to our Hookedblog Youtube channel and see all the street art-related film clips as soon as we share them.

Join Us on Instagram
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Related Street Art Stories
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Take a look at some of our previously shared Shoreditch street art sticker posts from our Stick It Up series featuring collections of street art stickers from London and Berlin.

Shoreditch Street Art Stickers Edition 9.

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Stick it up: Shoreditch Street Art Stickers Edition 10

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While the city streets may have been somewhat quieter over the last few months while the UK was in lockdown, many street and graffiti artists continued to work outdoors, painting murals, installing street art paste-ups, and sticking up stickers on the street.

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The Good, the Bad, and the Sticky - Center for Media Engagement

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What are the tradeoffs associated with sticker art in public spaces?

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Sticker Robot Custom Stickers | Clear/Die Cut Vinyl Sticker Printing by Sticker Robot©

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A Sticker Interview Imaginative Illustrator and Iconographer, David Lanham | Sticker Robot Custom Stickers

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David Lanham is a sticker artist who designs fun, colorful and highly imaginative stickers that we print them for him. We asked David to answer 10 questions.

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Artworks - David Lanham Art & Illustration

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The organic, sometimes weird but usually fun artwork of David Lanham.

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Device Wallpapers - David Lanham Art & Illustration

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Fun wallpaper packs for you device with colorful and unique illustrations by David Lanham.

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“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”

― Aesop

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The street sticker, be it ever so humble and diminutive, is profligate and sometimes even inspiring. An amalgamated scene that is anonymous, yet curiously stuck together, the organizers and sponsors of so-called sticker jams have been overwhelmed in recent years by thousands of participants.

Hand-made one-offs to slick mass-produced and custom die-cut by the hundred, these adhesive back expressions of personal branding may depict characters, slogans, witticisms, or satirical skewing of pop culture memes. Collectively these are the DNA of a global game played out in the street and in public spaces, a silent dialogue that yells quite loudly.

Artist and organizer IWILLNOT has compiled, organized, archived, and preserved this collection as a 'field guide,' he says, and another artist named Cheer Up has laid out page after page. It is a global cross-sample from 60 countries and a thousand artists - a treasure trove of the witty, insightful, snotty, and sometimes antisocial street bards of the moment, seizing their moment to speak and mark territory.

UNSMASHED: A Street Art Sticker Field Guide. Compiled by IWILLNOT, Designed by Cheer Up. A Collection of 1,229 full color sticker designs by 1,000 artists from more than 60 countries. Published by IWLLNOT and Cheer Up. December 2020.

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"Unsmashed" A Street Art Sticker "Field Guide"

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The street sticker, be it ever so humble and diminutive, is profligate and sometimes even inspiring. An amalgamated scene that is anonymous, yet curiously stuck together, the organizers and sponsors of so-called sticker jams have been overwhelmed in recent years by thousands of participants.

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Bumper stickers and car signs ideology and identity. | EBSCOhost

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Discover this 1992 paper in Journal of Popular Culture by Case, Charles E. focusing on: UNITED States; SIGNAGE; AUTOMOBILE bumpers; RESEMBLANCE (Philosophy); IDEOLOGY; CULTURE; MODERNISM (Christian theology)

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Department of Education, Experimental Psychology Laboratory, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy

Neuroimaging Laboratory, IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy

Empirical studies suggest that art improves health and well-being among individuals. However, how aesthetic appreciation affects our cognitive and emotional states to promote physical and psychological well-being is still unclear. In this review, we consider the idea that the positive emotional output elicited from the aesthetic experience affects mood, and indirectly promotes health and well-being. First, we examine evidence that arts promoting well-being involve art museums, healthcare settings, and education. Second, we review some neuroimaging studies addressing aesthetic experience and emotional processing. In particular, we leveraged advances in neuroaesthetics to explore different hypotheses about the determinants of aesthetic pleasure during art reception, in the attempt to clarify how experiencing art promotes well-being. Finally, we propose research on aesthetic experience and psychophysiological measures of stress, with the goal of promoting a focused use of art as a tool for improving well-being and health.

Introduction

Aesthetic experience concerns the appreciation of aesthetic objects and the resulting pleasure. Such pleasure is not derived from the utilitarian properties of the objects but linked to the intrinsic qualities of the aesthetic objects themselves. Hence, the aesthetic pleasure is disinterested ( Kant, 1790). Aesthetic experiences can arise from the appreciation of human artifacts, such as artworks (e.g., poetry, sculpture, music, visual arts, etc.) or aesthetic natural objects like sunsets or mountain vista. In this review, we refer to aesthetic experiences associated with the appreciation of artworks, particularly visual arts.

Aesthetic experiences are offered by multiple contexts, (e.g., museums, galleries, churches, etc.). Several psychological perspectives considered aesthetic experience as a rewarding process and suggested a link between aesthetic experience and pleasure ( Berlyne, 1974; Leder et al., 2004; Silvia, 2005). Recent studies suggest the arts can promote health and psychological well-being and offer a therapeutic tool for many, e.g., adolescents, elderly, and vulnerable individuals ( Daykin et al., 2008; Todd et al., 2017; Thomson et al., 2018). Aesthetic experience has been associated with mindfulness meditation, as it leads to enhancing the capability of perceptually engaging with an object ( Harrison and Clark, 2016). However, how aesthetic experience affects cognitive and emotional states and promotes physical and psychological well-being is a matter of debate ( Daykin et al., 2008). Several theoretical models have been proposed, suggesting alternating key roles for cognitive or emotional facets of the aesthetic experience. A common theme in the models is that the aesthetic evaluation of an artwork is the result of bottom-up stimulus properties and top-down cognitive appraisals ( Leder et al., 2004; Chatterjee and Vartanian, 2016; Pelowski et al., 2017). The result affects mood, therefore promoting health and well-being ( Kubovy, 1999; Sachs et al., 2015).

Here, we review evidence showing that arts promote well-being across several domains, and discuss the neural underpinnings of aesthetic experience, emotional processing, pleasure, and reward. In particular, we assess the idea that a common physiological mechanism underlies aesthetic processing in multiple places for experiencing art. Implications for therapeutic and educational uses of art are discussed.

Aesthetic Appreciation and Well-Being

Benefits associated with aesthetic processing have been demonstrated in different settings, ranging from reproductions of paintings shown in laboratories to real art contexts such as museums.

In the following sections, we present a review of the main research branches on art in which a beneficial effect on health has been shown.

Art in the Museum

Several studies show benefits of art museums as settings for therapy ( Treadon et al., 2006; Chatterjee and Noble, 2013). These benefits include improvement of memory and lower stress levels, and amelioration of social inclusion. Populations studied include older individuals ( Salom, 2011; Thomson et al., 2018), people with enduring mental health problems ( Colbert et al., 2013), people with dementia ( Morse and Chatterjee, 2018), and the socially isolated ( Todd et al., 2017). Moreover, in a study with people with dementia and their caregivers, viewing traditional and contemporary galleries, both art sites promoted well-being, including positive social impact and cognitive enhancement ( Camic et al., 2014).

Research has been conducted to identify the elements of the museum setting that facilitate the treatment goals, including psychological, social, environmental aspects ( Salom, 2011; Camic and Chatterjee, 2013; Colbert et al., 2013; Morse and Chatterjee, 2018). Museum environment and artifacts offer an extraordinary aesthetic experience that allows the recollection of positive memories ( Biasi and Carrus, 2016), and evidence suggests that these reminiscence activities can affect mood, self-worth, and a general sense of well-being in the elderly ( Chiang et al., 2009; O'Rourke et al., 2011; Eekelaar et al., 2012). Museum and galleries, unlike hospitals and clinics, are non-stigmatizing settings. The art setting encourages self-reflection and group communication, facilitating the therapeutic process and thus making them ideal locations for health interventions ( Camic and Chatterjee, 2013).

Using psychophysiological measures, studies find visits to art museums decrease stress, which could promote health and well-being ( Clow and Fredhoi, 2006; Mastandrea et al., 2018). Clow and Fredhoi reported that levels of salivary cortisol and self-reported measure of stress in 28 healthy young individuals decreased significantly after a visit to the Guildhall Art Gallery of London ( Clow and Fredhoi, 2006). Similarly, exposure to figurative art lowers systolic blood pressure (SBP), which could have relaxing effects ( Mastandrea et al., 2018). Specifically, 64 healthy female participants were assigned to one of three different visits to the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome: figurative art, modern art, and a control condition consisting of a visit to the museum office. Pre- and post-visit measures of blood pressure and heart rate were acquired, as indices of emotional states associated with the three visit conditions. Results revealed that only figurative art exposure decreased systolic blood pressure. Of interest, participants liked the two art styles equally well, and reduction in SBP was not correlated with liking. In fluency theory, processing ease increases positive emotional response to artwork ( Reber et al., 2004). Accordingly, it may be thought that the reduction of levels of ambiguity that characterizes unambiguous figurative arts may have a relaxing effect on the physiological states. On the other hand, as participants in this study were not asked to judge the comprehensibility or hedonic values of artworks, it is not possible to draw firm conclusions about the restorative effects following exposure to figurative, but not abstract artworks in art museum.

Art and Education

In learning through art, the learner approaches a subject matter by creating art, responding to art, or performing artistic works not by studying art as a theoretical discipline ( Rieger and Chernomas, 2013). This art-based learning (ABL) has been used successfully in healthcare education ( Wikström, 2003; Rieger et al., 2016). For instance, using a work of art as a teaching method is effective in increasing students' observational skills, empathy (i.e., abilities in empathizing with the patient and develop compassion), nonverbal communication, and interpersonal relationships, in comparison with traditional teaching programs ( Wikström, 2011). Wikstrom (2000) and colleagues showed that an educational program based on visual art dialogue evoked emotional experiences increasing nurses' empathy ( Wikstrom, 2000). The students were asked to describe nursing care patterns in the painting "The Sickbed" from Lena Croqvist, after which they were asked strategic questions aimed at eliciting empathetic responses, such as "From a nursing care perspective, how do the characters feel?" A control group was asked to describe good nursing practice without the support of visual art or pictures. The visual art was more effective than the control for expressing aspects of nursing care and in increasing empathy scores ( Wikström, 2001). These studies suggest that embedding visual art in healthcare education may increase understanding of emotional experience of chronic pain and suffering of the patients, thereby improving nursing care practices. A limitation of these studies is that control groups received only verbal instruction, that make it difficult to evaluate the specific contribution of art-specific visual support (i.e., visual portraits, artworks, etc.) from nonartistic visual support. On the other hand, correlational studies show that high aesthetic value of artistic movie sequences perceived by the student is associated significantly with learning enhancement ( Bonaiuto et al., 2002).

One might wonder how the emotional experience elicited by the appreciation of diverse forms of art enables individuals to feel better and learn quickly and effectively, and whether the boosting effect of art on these different domains forms a basis of a common cognitive or affective mechanism. Here, we suggest that the processing of aesthetic artwork relies on the activity of reward-related brain areas, resulting in positive emotions and pleasure that, modulating affective state, increase the individual predisposition to cognitive activities such as learning.

Linking the Brain to Aesthetic Experience

The studies reviewed so far demonstrated that the aesthetic value of artwork and their use in educational programs may affect psychological and physiological states, thus promoting well-being and enhancing learning. However, as we stated above, the mechanisms underlying the relationship between art and well-being are still unclear, probably due to the fact that the determinants of the aesthetic experience and its relationship with emotion processing and pleasure are still unresolved.

Here, we review some neuroimaging evidence detailing the neural underpinnings of the relationship between aesthetic experience and activation of emotional states in the beholder, to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the aesthetic experience and how it provokes aesthetic emotion and pleasure in the beholder. Moreover, we relate these findings to influential models of aesthetic processing.

From a psychological point of view, it has been suggested that the cognitive processing of art produces affective and often positive and pleasing aesthetic experiences. According to the information-processing stage model of aesthetic processing by Leder et al. (2004), the occurrence of aesthetic pleasure depends on a satisfactory cognitive understanding of the artwork. The better the understanding, the more the reduction of ambiguity, and the higher the probability of positive aesthetic emotion. When aesthetic experiences are often positive, it can be expected an increase in positive affect ( Leder et al., 2004). Enduring predominance of diffuse positive affective states influences mood ( Scherer, 2005), promotes health and learning. Consistently, some neurophysiological studies find that context information facilitates the processing of a work of art and increases positive emotions ( Gerger and Leder, 2015; Mastandrea, 2015; Mastandrea and Umiltà, 2016). This is accompanied by greater neural activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, regions strongly associated with the experience of reward and emotion processing ( Kawabata and Zeki, 2004; Kirk et al., 2009).

On the other hand, various theories of emotion have been influential in describing the paradoxical enjoyment of negative emotions in art ( Juslin, 2013; Sachs et al., 2015; Menninghaus et al., 2017). Several authors suggested that the psychological distance of the perceiver from what is depicted in the artwork-which comes from the individual's awareness that the represented object or event is a cultural artifact-reduces the emotional impact of the eliciting object or event and allows the appraisal of the aesthetic qualities of the artwork. This "psychological distance" account underpins the difference between art-specific emotions and utilitarian emotions ( Frijda, 1988; Scherer, 2005). Perceiving safety during art reception allows negative content of the artwork to be embraced. In this account, negative emotions such as sadness and sorrow are transformed in source of pleasure and empathetic responses to the emotional content of the artwork are allowed by the meta-emotional reappraisal ( Menninghaus et al., 2017). Accordingly, art context influenced aesthetic judgment and emotional responses as measured by facial electromyography (EMG). Specifically, defining visual stimuli as artistic prompted participants to judge artworks depicting negative emotional content more positively, meaning "liked" more. In other words, there might be a general positive bias in the perception of art ( Gerger et al., 2014).

The pleasurable effect of negative emotions in art reception has been extensively investigated in the field of music ( Vuoskoski et al., 2012; Juslin, 2013; Kawakami et al., 2013; Taruffi and Koelsch, 2014; Sachs et al., 2015). According to the BRECVEMA model elaborated by Juslin (2013), enjoying sadness in music derives from the combination of two key mechanisms, i.e., emotional contagion and aesthetic judgment that generate mixed affective responses. While listening to sad music, one may experience the feeling of sadness through the mechanism of emotion contagion and appreciate the beauty of the piece by judging it aesthetically positive ( Juslin, 2013). Some authors described the beneficial effects of music listening on the emotional health, reporting that listeners use music to enhance positive emotions and regulate negative emotions, affecting mood ( Taruffi and Koelsch, 2014; Sakka and Juslin, 2018). Consistently, an influential model by Sachs et al. (2015) posits that pleasure in response to sad music is functional to restore homeostatic equilibrium that promotes optimal functioning. For instance, a person who is experiencing emotional distress and has an absorptive personality will find pleasure in listening to sad music because, being focused on the aesthetic experience of appreciating the beauty of music will disengage him/her from distress, promoting positive mood. This concept is supported by the fact that listening to sad music engages the same network of structures in the brain (i.e., the OFC, the nucleus accumbens, insula, and cingulate) that are known to be involved in processing other stimuli with homeostatic value, such as those associated with food, sex, and attachment ( Berridge and Kringelbach, 2015; Sachs et al., 2015).

Neuroaesthetics is a relatively recent research field within cognitive neuroscience and refers to the study of neural correlates of aesthetic experience of beauty, particularly in visual art ( Chatterjee and Vartanian, 2016). Using multimodal neuroimaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance (fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and electroencephalography (EEG), it has produced heterogeneous results. Most studies, however, converge in the consideration of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and more generally, the core centers of emotional and reward-related responses as the putative correlates of the aesthetic experience of beauty ( Kawabata and Zeki, 2004; Di Dio and Gallese, 2009; Ishizu and Zeki, 2013), hence supporting psychological studies that suggest that aesthetic experience is emotionally positive and rewarding ( Leder et al., 2004). Using fMRI, it has been shown that rating the beauty of an artwork selectively engaged regions within the OFC irrespective of stimulus type (i.e., visual art, visual texture, music, mathematical formulae, moral judgment etc.) ( Blood et al., 1999; Kawabata and Zeki, 2004; Tsukiura and Cabeza, 2011; Jacobs et al., 2012; Zeki et al., 2014). Moreover, metabolic activity in those areas increased linearly as a function of aesthetic, but not perceptual judgment of paintings ( Ishizu and Zeki, 2013), indicating that aesthetic preference for paintings is mediated by activity within the reward-related network. Similarly, using MEG to record evoked potentials while viewing images of artworks and photographs, Cela-Conde et al. (2004) found that the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) responded more when participants judged the images as beautiful, than when they judged the images as not beautiful ( Cela-Conde et al., 2004). Interestingly, Vartanian and Goel (2004) highlighted different neural patterns of activation for pleasant and unpleasant paintings. Specifically, they found that bilateral occipital gyri and left cingulate sulcus activated more in response to preferred stimuli, whereas activation in the right caudate nucleus decreased in response to decreasing preference ratings ( Vartanian and Goel, 2004). As activity in the caudate nuclei have been found to decrease following a punishment feedback ( Delgado et al., 2000), it may be suggested that deactivation of left caudate reflects a general pattern of reduced activation to less rewarding stimuli ( Vartanian and Goel, 2004). In line with these findings, a recent study of Ishizu and Zeki (2017) showed that images rated as beautiful but evoking opposite emotions (i.e., joy vs. sorrow) modulated activity in OFC, but also activated areas that have been found to be involved in positive emotional states (i.e., controlling empathy toward other)-such as the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and the supramarginal gyrus (SMG)-and negative emotional states (i.e., perception of social pain)-such as the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and the middle frontal gyrus (MFG) ( Ishizu and Zeki, 2017). Consistent with these findings, theories of embodied cognition suggested that emotions may be conveyed by the work of art through embodied simulation ( Freedberg and Gallese, 2007; Azevedo and Tsakiris, 2017) or motor contagion ( Gerger et al., 2018). In support of this, neuroimaging studies found the aesthetic judgment of human and nature content paintings to be modulated by the activation of a motor component. That is, cortical motor systems were activated including parietal and premotor areas ( Di Dio et al., 2015). This suggests that dynamic artworks may engage motor systems via features that represent actions and emotions ( Freedberg and Gallese, 2007).

Aesthetic Emotion and Well-Being: Which Relationship?

Critically, the positive or negative valence of the aesthetic emotion does not appear to be relevant in determining the reward value of the aesthetic experience. A portrait, a sculpture, or a piece of music conveying feelings of sadness may be rated as beautiful and produce a modulation onto OFC regions and the centers of reward-related responses similar to artworks conveying positive feelings, such as joy and pleasure. These results support the claim that adopting a psychological distance in art context allows the perceiver to embrace the negative content of the work of art and, by means of empathetic responses to the content of the artworks, provoking aesthetic pleasure ( Menninghaus et al., 2017). According to Marković (2012), the aesthetic experience is an exceptional state of mind, which opposes everyday, pragmatic experience and "protects" the individual from the effects of oppressive reality ( Marković, 2012). Given these considerations, it may be thought that the aesthetic emotion is distinctive of aesthetic appreciation, denoting an art-specific emotional response evolved from basic biologic emotions ( Leder et al., 2004). As such, this self-rewarding nature of aesthetic experience may account for aesthetic appreciation's promotion of health and well-being. Alternatively, it may be that experiencing positive aesthetic emotions is not only the outcome of a special empathetic state provoked by the artwork but may depend on the level of perceived ambiguity in the artwork itself. In processing fluency theory of beauty, the more fluently the perceiver can process an object, the more positive the aesthetic response ( Reber et al., 2004). In other words, features that facilitate processing of a stimulus (e.g., objective stimulus properties and subjective previous experience with the stimulus) result in positive affective responses and more favorable judgments or preferences ( Reber et al., 2004). In this view, positive valence of the aesthetic emotion is the product of the processing experience of the perceiver, aesthetic or not.

Therefore, aesthetic pleasure can depend, in turn, on satisfactory mastering the stimulus, emotional responses or both ( Mastandrea et al., 2009; Chirumbolo et al., 2014). As reviewed above, theoretical frameworks explaining the paradox of enjoying negative emotions in art indicated that different key factors interact to produce a pleasurable response ( Juslin, 2013; Menninghaus et al., 2017), as a function of restoring homeostatic balance ( Sachs et al., 2015).

Intriguingly, the positive affective state derived from the aesthetic emotion, whatsoever origin it may have had, may have a common neural substrate in the reward-related brain circuitry.

Nevertheless, these different approaches to aesthetic evaluation may have different implications for a strategic use of art as tool for promoting well-being and health. Consistent with the fluency processing theory of beauty, representational paintings should be more effective than abstract paintings for enhancing learning processes within art-based education programs. Similarly, artwork high in comprehensibility should render healthcare settings or work environments more gratifying than less intelligible artwork. On the other hand, it is possible that experiencing an abstract modern painting in an art museum (i.e., an art context soliciting the adoption of a distanced perspective in the perception of art) can arouse a powerful aesthetic emotion. This could improve perceived well-being ( Freedberg and Gallese, 2007; Gerger et al., 2014, 2018; Menninghaus et al., 2017).

Conclusion

Aesthetic experience, in many settings, may promote well-being. Neuroaesthetics research suggests that aesthetic pleasure is derived by the interaction between emotion processing that involves reward-related areas in the brain and top-down processes derived from the relationship of the beholder with the cultural artifact. The self-rewarding nature of aesthetic experience may influence the beholder's affective state, possibly improving well-being. However, there still are many questions that future research should address to clarify the determinants of aesthetic pleasure and their relationship to health. First, the impact of aesthetic emotion on measured well-being has been assessed through subjective ratings using interviews or questionnaires, scarcely considering more objective indices recorded through psychophysiological measures. Moreover, it remains unclear whether proper use of art to improve well-being should emphasize the empathetic responses to the artwork or the possibility for the beholder to master the meaning of the artwork itself. Future research should consider these issues in developing art-based programs in healthcare and education.

Author Contributions

SM conceived the idea, reviewed the literature, and wrote the draft of the manuscript. SF reviewed the literature and wrote the draft of the manuscript. VB collaborated to the idea with SM, reviewed the literature on educational applications and supervised the manuscript writing.

Funding

SM received grant from the Department of Education of the University of Roma TRE. Grant Number: 814000-2018-SM-CONTAB.DIP_003.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Marco Bertamini, Slobodan Marković, and one anonymous reviewer for their most valuable comments on the manuscript.

References

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Frontiers | Art and Psychological Well-Being: Linking the Brain to the Aesthetic Emotion

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Empirical studies suggest that art improves health and well-being among individuals. However, how aesthetic appreciation affects our cognitive and emotional ...

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Evidence for the effects of viewing visual artworks on stress outcomes: a scoping review

Abstract

Objective To review the existing evidence on the effects of viewing visual artworks on stress outcomes and outline any gaps in the research.

Design A scoping review was conducted based on the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews and using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews. Two independent reviewers performed the screening and data extraction.

Data sources Medline, Embase, APA PsycINFO, Cochrane CENTRAL, Scopus, Google Scholar, Google, ProQuest Theses and Dissertations Database, APA PsycExtra and Opengrey.eu were searched in May 2020.

Eligibility criteria Studies were included if they investigated the effects of viewing at least one visual artwork on at least one stress outcome measure. Studies involving active engagement with art, review papers or qualitative studies were excluded. There were no limits in terms of year of publication, contexts or population types; however, only studies published in the English language were considered.

Data extraction and synthesis Information extracted from manuscripts included: study methodologies, population and setting characteristics, details of the artwork interventions and key findings.

Results 14 primary studies were identified, with heterogeneous study designs, methodologies and artwork interventions. Many studies lacked important methodological details and only four studies were randomised controlled trials. 13 of the 14 studies on self-reported stress reported reductions after viewing artworks, and all of the four studies that examined systolic blood pressure reported reductions. Fewer studies examined heart rate, heart rate variability, cortisol, respiration or other physiological outcomes.

Conclusions There is promising evidence for effects of viewing artwork on reducing stress. Moderating factors may include setting, individual characteristics, artwork content and viewing instructions. More robust research, using more standardised methods and randomised controlled trial designs, is needed.

Registration details A protocol for this review is registered with the Open Science Framework (osf.io/gq5d8).

complementary medicine

mental health

psychiatry

social medicine

Data availability statement

Data sharing not applicable as no datasets generated and/or analysed for this study. No data are available.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

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Strengths and limitations of this study

A comprehensive scoping review was conducted using a broad and inclusive search strategy and a large variety of databases were searched.

The reviewers independently followed a structured and prepublished protocol for searching, screening and extracting data which followed the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines.

Only studies published in the English language were included, possibly resulting in articles of other languages being missed.

Slight deviations in the original protocol were performed in order to make the data screening more feasible.

Introduction

A number of studies and reviews have suggested that participation in the arts is beneficial for health. 1-4 Because of this, many healthcare and workplace settings offer art programmes, including art therapy, music and visual art displays, to reduce stress and improve well-being for staff, patients and customers. 5 However, there is little evidence that these programmes have the desired effects and there is a need for a high-quality evidence base for art-based interventions. 1 4

Engagement with arts can be divided into active and passive participation. Active participation involves making, creating or teaching arts. 2 6 This includes art therapy (where an art therapist directs the creation of artworks to achieve a particular goal and foster improved mental health and well-being), as well as other arts-based interventions that are not goal driven and do not require a trained professional. 7 In contrast passive participation involves behaviours such as observing, viewing, listening and watching art. 2 6 Passive viewing of artworks has the advantages of being an easy, low-cost and non-invasive intervention. This scoping review focused on the effects of passively viewing visual artworks and therefore excluded research pertaining to the active participation in arts.

There is some evidence that viewing artworks as an intervention is beneficial; however, this evidence is not of uniformly high quality, is rarely critical, and is sparse, with many important theoretical and evidential gaps. As well as this, most of the evidence comes from anecdotes, descriptions and personal experiences, rather than empirical research. 8 9 Although many settings have been used within this research, including healthcare, art museums and laboratories, there is a paucity of evidence to demonstrate whether these settings affect outcomes differently. Demographics may be important moderators as ethnicity, gender and age may influence preferences for certain types of artworks. However, rigorous research has yet to be conducted examining the influence of settings and populations.

Due to these limitations, it is important to review the existing evidence and identify any research gaps that need to be addressed. As the evidence base is small and heterogeneous, a systematic review could not be accurately completed and would be too restrictive, so instead a scoping review was conducted. The results can be used to direct future research to fill these gaps before a full systematic review can be completed.

There is no universally accepted definition of artworks as this construct has been inconsistent and debated. For the purpose of this review, artwork was defined as two-dimensional artistic works made primarily for their aesthetics, rather than any functional purpose. This definition was created from working definitions of visual and fine arts used in previous research. 10 11 Based on this definition, this review included studies on paintings, drawings and prints and excluded studies on sculpture, films, interior design or architecture. Photographs were only included if they depicted artworks, as it was deemed too difficult to determine the difference between 'artistic' photography and 'non-artistic' photography based on the definition of artworks provided for this review. Digital artworks were included.

Viewing artworks is a form of visual environmental enrichment and is theorised to be stress-reducing through positive distraction. 8 12 To explore this theory, the review focused on the effects of viewing visual artworks on stress outcomes. Both psychological and physiological stress outcomes were included.

Objective and research questions

The aim of this scoping review was to systematically identify the current evidence available on the effects of viewing visual artworks on stress outcome measures and identify research and knowledge gaps to aid future research. The following research question was formulated: what research has been conducted on the effects of viewing visual artworks on stress outcomes in any populations and settings?

Several secondary questions were developed to map the available evidence:

What populations and settings were studied?

What study methodologies were used?

What stress outcomes were measured?

What type and content of artworks were viewed?

What was the duration of the artwork viewing and how many artworks were viewed?

Did the studies show changes in the stress outcomes?

Methods

A preliminary search for previous reviews on this topic was conducted on Google Scholar, Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Evidence Synthesis and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews prior to creating the protocol.

Protocol

A scoping review protocol was developed based on the JBI methodology for scoping reviews 13 and using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews.

Eligibility criteria

Studies had to meet the following inclusion criteria; be a primary study where participants passively viewed at least one visual artwork as an intervention, including viewing paintings, drawings, prints, digital artwork or photographs of artworks, and measured at least one stress outcome measure (physiological or psychological indices). Measures of anxiety or mood were not considered as direct measures of stress and therefore fell out of the scope of this review. Unpublished research, including working papers, theses/dissertations and conference proceedings were included if they were identified by the search.

Studies were excluded if participants had active engagement in the arts (eg, studies on art therapy or the production/creation of art), the study investigated the effects of interior design, architecture, sculpture, films or photography not depicting artworks, and review papers, including systematic reviews, scoping reviews and meta-analyses.

As per the scoping review objectives, there were no restrictions in terms of populations, contexts, dates of publication or study designs. However, during the screening phase, it was decided to exclude qualitative studies as these studies did not have clear stress outcomes, which was a key inclusion criterion. Only studies published in the English language were considered.

Search strategy

To identify potentially relevant studies, the following electronic databases were systematically searched; Medline, Embase, APA PsycINFO, Cochrane CENTRAL, Scopus and Google Scholar (first 30 pages), with the help of a subject librarian. The search string combined a set of artwork and stress terms within each set with 'OR' and between the two sets with 'AND.' The search was first conducted using an extended list of search terms from the registered protocol; however, this search strategy resulted in a large number of irrelevant articles. Therefore, in the final search, some of the more ambiguous search terms were removed to refine the search further. For example, the term 'drawing' was removed as this could refer both to artistic drawings and 'drawing' blood. The final search strategies for two example databases are presented in table 1.

The grey literature was searched using the same search terms to identify any unpublished studies. Grey literature databases searched included; Google (limited to the first 20 pages), ProQuest theses and dissertations database, APA PsycExtra and Opengrey.eu.

A search was then conducted by hand of the reference lists of relevant identified articles. Lastly, the 'cited by' feature of Google Scholar was used to see if any of the relevant studies had been cited by undetected articles. All extracted references from these searches were imported to RefWorks and all duplicates removed. The final search was executed on 27 May 2020. The number of studies identified by the search strategy is shown in figure 1.

Screening and study selection

Screening of the studies identified by the search strategy was conducted by two independent reviewers using a two-staged approach using the programme Covidence ( www.covidence.org). Due to the high volume and large number of unrelated studies identified, one author initially screened the titles and removed any irrelevant studies, before the first stage. In the first stage of screening, two reviewers independently screened the abstracts for the eligibility criteria. If a study's eligibility was judged to be uncertain, the article was included in the second stage. In the second stage, two reviewers screened the full texts of the studies to determine final inclusion or exclusion based on the eligibility criteria. The two stages were conducted by the reviewers independently, with the results of each stage discussed. Any disagreements related to eligibility of an article were discussed and agreement was reached. The two reviewers had overall 86% agreement. The number of included and excluded studies at each stage of the screening procedure is shown in figure 1, with reasons for exclusion.

Data extraction and analysis

Data were extracted from each included study into a charting form by the two reviewers independently. This charting form was developed in accordance with the review questions. It included; publication details (ie, title, year, authors), methodology (ie, aims, design, population characteristics, setting, outcomes, study registration, power analyses, comparator groups, randomisation and blinding), artwork details (ie, type and content of artwork, duration of artwork viewing, number of artworks) and key findings related to scoping review questions.

The charting form was iteratively refined during the extraction process to ensure all useful information was extracted. The charting form was first independently pilot tested by the two reviewers on a random sample of four studies. The reviewers discussed this process and amended the charting form by adding a column about the artwork viewing directives given to the participants. Data extraction was then completed for the remaining studies independently by the two reviewers and any inconsistencies were discussed. This extracted data are reported in tabular and descriptive text format to answer the review questions.

Patient and public involvement

Patients and the public were not involved in any phase of this review.

Results

As shown in figure 1, the search strategy resulted in 3882 texts, which were screened for eligibility. After the initial title and abstract screening, the full text was retrieved for 53 articles and examined against the eligibility criteria. During this process, three theses were found to have matching published journal articles and therefore were excluded as duplicates. The remaining excluded articles did not meet the eligibility criteria. This screening narrowed the studies down to 14 articles for inclusion.

The design and key findings related to the stress outcomes of each study are briefly detailed in table 2, with specific details regarding the secondary review questions provided in table 3. All 14 articles were primary studies published as journal articles. Apart from the duplicate theses mentioned above, no grey literature met the eligibility criteria for inclusion. The studies' publication dates ranged from 1972 to 2020. Eight studies came from Europe, 9 14-20 four from the USA 10 21-23 and one each from Australia 24 and New Zealand. 25

Summary of study methodologies

Designs

The 14 studies had very different designs and methodologies (see table 3). Only nine studies used a between groups design. 9 10 14 16 17 20 22 23 25 Another four used a within groups design, where measures were compared previewing to postviewing the artworks, with no comparator groups. 15 18 19 24 The final study used a cross-sectional design, measuring stress-reduction at one time point. 21

Of the nine between groups designs, six used a no artwork control group as a comparator, 9 10 17 20 22 23 and one used scrambled versions of the artworks. 25 Krauss et al 16 gave different viewing directives to each group and de Jong 14 had groups with different art experience levels. Four of these between groups studies were considered randomised controlled trials (RCTs). 9 10 16 20

Settings

Six studies were conducted in an art gallery or museum, 15-19 24 three in a laboratory, 14 22 25 four in hospital rooms or hospital public spaces 9 10 21 23 and one in senior citizens' apartments. 20 These settings represent a mix of both naturalistic settings with high ecological validity and laboratory settings with high experimental control.

Populations

The majority of studies investigated healthy participants in the form of students, 14 17 22 office workers 15 or the general public. 16 18 19 25 Other research used patient populations known to have high stress levels. Four studies investigated hospitalised patients, 9 21 with two being paediatric samples. 10 23 Lastly, D'Cunha et al 24 investigated people living with dementia and Wikström et al, 20 elderly women.

There is little research on whether population type affects stress reactions. Very few studies compared demographic factors, with the following exceptions. de Jong 14 found that having different art experience affected outcomes. Three studies found significant differences between the stress-reducing effects of viewing artwork between males and females. 10 15 22 Lastly, one study compared results across different health conditions, but found similar results between groups. 21

Outcomes

Nine studies explored only physiological stress measures, 14 16 19 20 23-25 three explored only psychological stress measures 9 21 22 and the remaining two explored both. 10 15 The psychological stress measures included; the Cox Mackay Stress Arousal checklist, 26 a stress adjective checklist, 27 Likert scales, and a distress thermometer. 28 The physiological measures were mainly cardiovascular, including blood pressure, heart rate and skin conductance, which were measured in eight studies. Salivary biomarkers were measured in three studies 15 24 25 including cortisol, alpha-amylase and interlukin-6. Respiration was measured in two studies. 10 14

Registration details

None of the studies were preregistered.

Power

Sample sizes ranged from 27 to 826 participants; however, only two studies conducted a power analysis to determine their sample size. Krauss et al's 16 power analysis gave a required sample size of at least 68, and a final sample of 75 was recruited. The power analysis in McCabe et al 9 gave 200 participants and a sample of 199 were recruited; however, only 164 were included in the analyses. The other 12 studies did not provide a power analysis. Law et al 25 was a pilot study, and was not expected to conduct a power analysis to determine sample size. Therefore, it is difficult to determine if all studies were adequately powered.

Randomisation

All nine between-groups studies reported randomisation of participants to groups. However, the method of randomisation was not stated in many studies. Only four studies 9 10 16 20 were RCTs.

Blinding

For most studies, it was difficult to blind the participants, because in most cases participants were explicitly asked to view particular artworks, and therefore both the researcher and participants were aware of which artworks they were viewing. However, two studies did successfully blind the study as both the researchers/nurses collecting the stress measures and the participants themselves were not explicitly made aware of the presence (or absence) of the artworks. 23 25

Summary of the artwork interventions

Types of artworks

Ten studies used physical artworks. Most were original paintings, however, one study used posters depicting artworks 22 and another used a window mural. 23 Another three studies used digital reproductions of artworks. Two used slideshows of digital images, 14 25 whereas the third used the Open Window, which digitally projected artworks. 9 The last study directly compared physical artworks with their digital reproductions. 18 This study did not find any differences between the types of artwork, indicating that digital reproductions may be just as stress-reducing as physical artworks.

Content of artworks

The content ranged from representational nature images, to complex abstract artworks. Five studies provided an assortment of artwork content in one exhibition 15 17 21 24 and therefore it could not be determined whether content was influential. Two studies investigated the effects of abstract artwork but did not compare these to another artwork type. 16 18 Another study 14 compared the physiological effects of artworks rated to be 'ugly' or 'beautiful.' Although the exact content of the artwork was not described, this study did find that participants had higher skin conductance and respiration rates while viewing the 'beautiful' paintings, compared with the 'ugly' paintings, demonstrating that the aesthetic content of the artwork may influence their effects.

Another four studies investigated the effects of viewing nature artworks. Two studies found that self-reported stress was lower when viewing nature artworks compared with abstract artworks. 10 22 One study found that different aspects of nature might have stronger effects; a forest mural resulted in larger blood pressure decreases than an aquatic mural. 23 Nature content may also affect biological indicators of stress responses; cortisol levels decreased faster after a stressor in people viewing scrambled versions of nature artworks, compared with the original nature artworks. 25

The remaining two studies 9 20 did not report on the content of the artwork, and therefore, cannot be categorised.

Duration of artwork viewing

Nine studies reported the duration participants spent looking at the artwork (see table 3). This ranged from 2 min to over 48 hours. No study investigated whether changing the duration of exposure to artworks affected stress outcomes.

Quantity of artworks

Most of the studies did not specify the exact number of artworks viewed. Of those studies that did specify a number, it ranged from one artwork to over 5300 in one exhibition. Half of the studies had participants view a collection of artworks as an exhibition or art programme. Only two studies showed each participant one artwork and both were in paediatric hospital rooms. 10 23 The other experimental studies ranged from viewing 4 to 26 artworks in one sitting, with the exact numbers provided in table 3.

Viewing directives

Five studies explicitly mentioned the viewing directives given to participants. The researchers from two experimental studies told participants to attentively look at and explore each artwork, 14 18 whereas the researcher in another study asked visitors to explore the art gallery in any way they pleased. 15 The remaining two studies asked participants to discuss and describe each artwork to the group during art programmes. 20 24 One of these studies 24 had a trained art educator facilitating the discussions, whereas the other 20 had a lead researcher, with no specified training.

Summary of key findings

All but one of the studies that measured self-reported stress found a significant decrease after viewing artwork, 10 15 21 22 with the final study showing no significant changes. 9 A consistent decrease in systolic blood pressure was also found across the four studies measuring blood pressure. 10 17 20 23 Skin conductance and skin conductance variability both increased while viewing artworks. 14 16 19 The results for heart rate were mostly consistent. Two of the three studies that measured heart rate found that viewing artworks decreased heart rate. 19 23 The other study found that viewing beautiful paintings increased heart rate for students trained in fine arts and decreased heart rate for other participants. 14

The cortisol and respiration results were less consistent. An art gallery visit decreased salivary cortisol levels 15; however, a 6-week art intervention for people living with dementia increased waking cortisol levels. 24 Lastly, after a stressor, salivary cortisol decreased faster in those viewing scrambled images, compared with those viewing landscapes. 25 Viewing beautiful paintings lead to an increase in respiration rates in a healthy sample. 14 Whereas nature artworks in a hospital room decreased respiration rates in children. 10 These studies all had different samples, settings and artworks which may have accounted for these mixed findings. Lastly both alpha-amylase 25 and interleukin- 6 24 were each only measured in one study and showed no significant changes.

Discussion

This scoping review aimed to identify the available evidence on the effects of viewing visual artworks on stress outcomes and identify gaps in the research. The 14 included studies demonstrate that research in this area is growing, with 10 studies being published in the last 10 years. There are a number of limitations to research in this area, including a paucity of RCTs, and heterogeneous methodologies and interventions. This scoping review was able to comprehensively identify the relevant research and descriptively present some evidence to address the research questions outlined in the introduction and identify gaps for future research, as detailed below.

Overall, the preliminary findings from the included studies support the claim that viewing artworks can reduce stress, in particular self-reported stress and systolic blood pressure. These preliminary quantitative results support qualitative research showing that viewing artworks provides positive distraction from a hospital environment and lowers self-reported stress. 9 12 29 The findings indicated that digital artworks can have similar stress-reducing effects to physical artworks, thus increasing the avenues available for viewers. Artwork interventions can therefore be transposed onto computers, televisions, phones and tablets, as a portable, cheap and easy intervention for stress-reduction.

Together the preliminary evidence suggest that the provision of artworks could reduce stress. However, mixed findings combined with a lack of homologous methodologies mean that more rigorous research is needed. Future research needs to employ stronger methods including: adequate comparator groups, power analyses to ensure sufficient sample sizes, clearly defined randomisation procedures and preregistration. If we examine the results from just the four RCTs, the evidence is even less conclusive. More detail on these studies and their findings are provided in table 2; however, only one of the four RCTs showed significant effects for their main hypotheses. Wikström et al 20 found a significant decrease in systolic blood pressure after an art intervention. In contrast, McCabe et al 9 found no significant effects on distress measures, and Eisen et al 10 only found significant effects when subgroup analyses of age were conducted. Lastly, Krauss et al 16 did find significant decreases in physiological stress when viewing artworks compared with baseline; however, they found no significant differences between the viewing directives provided, which was their main hypothesis. Therefore, more RCTs still need to be conducted on this topic for clearer conclusions to be made.

The differences between the studies suggest important moderating factors, one of which is setting. The museum context may add to the effects of viewing artwork, as museum related factors may lead to greater appreciation of artwork. 30 In addition, viewing artwork in a museum usually involves walking, which has its own stress-reducing effects. 31 Laboratory studies remove some of these contextual factors and may provide more specific evidence for the effects of viewing artworks, but they have lower ecological validity. The hospital room is an important setting as patients are often confined to their room for long time periods and rooms are often deprived of environmental enrichment. Artwork could act as visual stimulation to positively distract patients from their stress, pain and medical conditions, and therefore it is suggested that artwork is placed in hospital rooms and waiting rooms. Artwork could also have stress-reducing benefits in other settings such as waiting rooms and workplaces, which are often related to high stress. More research in these settings should be conducted.

Other possible moderating factors include individual characteristics, although little research has investigated these. Gender differences were found in two of the included studies, with a trend towards females experiencing greater stress-reduction in response to nature artworks. 10 22 One small survey found that African Americans and Caucasians have similar preferences for nature artworks 32; however, no study has investigated whether culture affects the stress-reducing effects of artworks. Given the diversity in cultures, demographics and individual preferences for artwork, it may be over simplistic to suggest that all individuals experience artwork the same way. 33

The findings indicate that the content and aesthetic qualities of artwork are also important considerations. Although mixed, the studies generally indicated that nature, especially greenery, may be the most stress-reducing. This is consistent with research demonstrating that nature artwork is most preferred by adults 34 and children. 10 There are two main theories as to why viewing nature is beneficial for humans. The evolutionary theory proposes that because humans evolved in a natural environment, nature is processed more efficiently and we are predisposed to experience restoration. 35 On the other hand, the attention restoration theory posits that nature can counteract the mental fatigue caused by stress and therefore reduce cognitive strain. 36 Thus, these two theories point to nature artwork as having the greatest stress reducing effects, as demonstrated in this review. In contrast, abstract artworks can be seen as challenging, ambiguous and unclear for viewers, leading to increased stress. 30 37 This is supported by the emotional congruence theory which posits that stressed people are likely to project their negative experiences and emotions onto ambiguous environmental surroundings, including artworks. 5 Other artwork content could be provocative and emotionally inappropriate for certain situations, eliciting anger and dislike. For example, a study by Ho et al 33 found that certain provocative artworks elicited feelings of loneliness and hopelessness in viewers, suggesting artwork must be chosen carefully, with particular emphasis on the provision of nature artworks.

The mixed findings suggest that under some conditions, viewing artwork may be physiologically relaxing, whereas under other conditions viewing artwork may be physiologically stimulating. The direction of these effects may not only depend on the content of the artwork, but also the context and viewers' stress levels. Regardless of the direction of effects on physiology, lower self-reported stress may result.

Although this review focused on the stress-reducing effects of viewing artwork, it may also be important to investigate the stimulating aspects of artwork. For certain populations, such as people living with dementia, visual stimulation and enrichment through artworks could improve other aspects of health, such as cognitive function. 24 As discussed above, visual stimulation and enrichment may also be important to provide positive distraction from negative experiences. Three studies showed an increase in physiological stress. 14 24 25 This increased stimulation may be related to the content of the artworks ('beautiful' vs 'ugly' paintings, 14 or landscapes vs scrambled images 25) or the types of populations involved (people living with dementia 24 and art students 14). Therefore, the provision of stimulating artworks may be appropriate for certain situations, including for people living with dementia.

Choice may be another important variable. This is especially pertinent in settings where people have little control. Art Carts have been used in hospitals to allow patients to choose which artworks to view during their stay to give them a sense of control over their environment. 29 Two studies in this review 9 20 gave participants a choice of artwork, however research is yet to investigate whether the element of choice affects stress outcomes.

Directives given to viewers may influence the way participants view artworks and therefore moderate the artworks' stress-reducing effects. Wikström 38 previously discussed the importance of creating an art-dialogue when viewing and discussing artworks in order to improve engagement, understanding and empowerment. Other research 33 demonstrated that the descriptions given to viewers about artwork could be influential, and therefore this may be an important element for studies to include. However, few studies reported the directives given. It is important for future research to report what directives were provided and investigate whether this is influential.

Finally, it is difficult to determine the dose-response relationship of artwork viewing. There was little consistency in the number of artworks shown to each participant, and no study investigated whether the quantity of artworks or viewing durations mattered. Therefore, future research could investigate the best artwork viewing duration and number of works.

Limitations

This review is limited by only including articles published in the English language. Articles in other languages could have been missed. The review deviated slightly from the original protocol. Due to the large number of irrelevant articles identified using the original search strategy, the search terms were narrowed and the original title screening was only conducted by one reviewer. These deviations were required to make the search and screening more feasible. This review did not include anxiety or mood measures or studies using qualitative methodology, as these outcomes were considered outside the scope of the review.

Conclusions

This scoping review summarised the relevant research that investigated viewing visual artworks on stress outcomes. Fourteen studies met the eligibility criteria, with extracted results showing consistent reductions in self-reported stress and systolic blood pressure, but mixed effects on other physiological outcomes. However, there were only four RCTs, and there was high heterogeneity in research methodologies. Setting, individual characteristics, artwork content and viewing instructions may be important moderating factors. More robust research is recommended that uses standardised interventions, validated assessment methods and RCT designs, to investigate the effects of viewing visual art on stress outcomes.

Data availability statement

Data sharing not applicable as no datasets generated and/or analysed for this study. No data are available.

Ethics statements

Patient consent for publication

Not required.

Read the full text or download the PDF:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Evidence for the effects of viewing visual artworks on stress outcomes: a scoping review

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Objective To review the existing evidence on the effects of viewing visual artworks on stress outcomes and outline any gaps in the research. Design A scoping review was conducted based on the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews and using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews.

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About the author

Dr Vien Cheung holds an academic post as Associate Professor in Colour and Imaging Science.

She has published over 100 refereed research papers, book chapters and book in the areas of colour (imaging, science, vision, design) and textile (technology, engineering, design).

She is active in charitable and educational organisations concerning colour including the International Colour Association (AIC), The Colour Group (Great Britain) and the Society of Dyers and Colourists.

She is also a writer for VC2 (weseetoo), on topics including existence, wellness, culture, value, universe, nature, environment and sustainable living practices.

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Colour: its influence and impact on the way we live

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dr Vien Cheung holds an academic post as Associate Professor in Colour and Imaging Science. She has published over 100 refereed research papers, book chapters and book in the areas of colour (imaging, science, vision, design) and textile (technology, engineering, design).

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https://www.colorpsychology.org/

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A good rule of thumb for many Westerners is this: wear black to a funeral. Black, in this context, signifies solemnity; it's how we show that we're grieving and respecting that of those around us. Weddings, on the other hand, are known for white - but only for the bride! While the bride wears white to symbolize purity and uphold tradition, wearing white as a guest is often seen as an attempt at pulling attention away from the ceremony, which can be considered gravely insulting depending on one's company.

Wardrobe, of course, is far from the only place in our lives where color comes into play. But the point still stands: color is vital to the human experience. Through color, we feel; we communicate; we heal. Those in advertising use it to sell products; those in schools and offices use it to increase productivity.

When it comes to communication, color is unbeatable. Unconscious or otherwise, color can evoke emotions, inspire reactions, and change modes of thinking. It can excite or soothe your mood, raise or lower your blood pressure, and even whet your appetite! Whether it's innate or learned, it's undeniable that color has a vital impact on how we go about our lives.

With the basics of the color theory under your belt, you can approach the psychology of individual colors with a bit more nuance. As we've established, color is far from just a visual experience; it can affect your mood, your wants, your reactions, so on and so forth. However, such a powerful tool is wasted if you don't know how to use it effectively.

As such, knowing the personality and psychological effects of different colors - including various shades and tints popular with producers and consumers alike - is vital!

Consider the following list a table of contents of sorts. This will be your point of reference from which to navigate the depths of color psychology.

From the start of the rainbow to the ubiquitous advertising for Valentine's Day, red remains one of the most evocative colors on the visible spectrum. As a primary color, red is a color entirely its own - that is to say, no other colors can come together to form a perfect red. In RGB, red is comprised of 100% red, 0% green, and 0% blue.

Associated with energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love.

Enhances human metabolism, increases respiration rate, and raises blood pressure.

It attracts attention more than any other color, at times signifying danger.

Popular shades of red: Magenta, Burgundy, Maroon.

Read more about the color red >>

Green is the primary color that hints at our primitive relationship with the first creation of the world - nature. Considered the key color that represents purity, health, and freshness, green has been traditionally associated with brands that encourage growth, vitality, and productivity (think Starbucks and EverNote!).

Gentle, invigorating, and relaxing, green also represents connection. Connection to ourselves, to the quiet moments in our lives, to nature itself. It is not a mere coincidence that people evade the concrete jungle of big cities to disconnect from the mundane and connect to the wilderness of nature. Green means the return to the primal roots, to the pristine kingdom of inner peace and tranquillity.

Popular shades of green: Chartreuse

Read more about the color green >>

In contrast to its sister primary color, red, blue is associated with a calm serenity over intensity or passion. When asked to visualize a tranquil scene, chances are people will immediately imagine a great deal of blue - usually in the form of a still body of water. Thoughtful and still, blue represents a sense of inner reflection. A great deal of research has indicated that this impact on the body is indeed inverse to red's, resulting in lower heart rates and even slower metabolisms.

Popular shades of blue: Teal, Turquoise

Read more about the color blue >>

Moving on to a more serious and imposing color, we arrive at brown, which no longer sends us thinking of youthfulness and excitement. Traditionally associated with seriousness, stability, and wisdom, brown is mostly worn by people who impose respect and appreciation through their status. When you think of this color, you might envision a paternal figure or a grandfather in the middle of the family.

Because families are centered on the stability and resourcefulness of the main male figure, most people feel secure and stable when thinking about brown. Paternal figures who passed a certain age also exude a sense of stability, but in the material sense - they have accumulated life experience which is manifested in possessions and financial gain. Most people feel safe around people wearing brown because they represent seriousness, reliance, and support.

Associated with the traits of dependability, reliability, and resilience.

Brown-lovers are most often reserved and not looking to attract attention to oneself

While light brown represents honesty and stability, dark brown is considered mature, predictable, and dull

Read more about the color brown >>

Bright and persuasive, orange results from the combination of yellow and red. As we have seen in the previous section, yellow denotes optimism and cheerfulness, while red can suggest intense feelings of love and even dominance. Orange sits in the middle of those extremities: it promotes rejuvenation, communication, and positivism. This color also enhances extraversion, allowing people to let go of their inhibitions and express themselves more freely.

Combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow.

Associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics.

Represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation.

Read more about the color orange >>

"He is so bright" - Have you ever wondered where the association of increased mental capacity and this particular visual adjective comes from? Yellow, the brightest color of the spectrum, is commonly used in images depicting fresh ideas, creative projects, or new business initiatives. You probably already know the prototypical image of someone brainstorming ideas that are linked with a bright yellow bulb! This is not a random association: yellow has been scientifically proven by studies to enhance mental activity and heighten awareness and energy levels.

The brightness of this color unclogs mental blocks and encourages people to seek new perspectives by abandoning the dull ways of looking at the world. You can think of yellow as the main color of the morning time, when you are the most alert, insightful and analytical, and when you have the chance to create a brand new day in your life. And do not just take my word for it - studies have linked yellow with increased activity of the left side of the brain, which is considered the powerhouse of rational thinking!

Associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy.

Produces a warming effect, arouses cheerfulness, stimulates mental activity, and generates
muscle energy.

Bright, pure yellow is an attention-getter, which is the reason taxicabs are painted this color.

When overused, yellow may have a disturbing effect.

It is known that babies cry more in yellow rooms.

Yellow indicates honor and loyalty. Later the meaning of yellow was connected with cowardice.

Popular shades of yellow: Amber, Beige

Read more about the color yellow >>

One of the gentlest and yet most contradictory colors out there, pink is a color that varies greatly depending on its context. Making it, however, remains simple. Though it has a great number of shades and undertones, pink is most commonly known to be a pale red mixed with white.

Popular shades of Pink: Salmon

Read more about the color pink >>

And so we arrive at our first secondary color. A beautiful mixture of red and purple, purple sits exactly halfway between the two on the color wheel, though varying each amount can result in new shades.

True to its red parent color, purple is often associated with luxury and power. However, as opposed to red's tendency to reflect the material facets of power and ambition, purple errs towards royalty and nobility. The blue tones bring in a sense of relaxation and stability, which alongside the energy of red synthesizes to create a feeling of wisdom and good sense.

Combines the stability of blue and the energy of red.

Associated with royalty. It symbolizes power, nobility, luxury, and ambition.

Conveys wealth and extravagance.

Associated with wisdom, dignity, independence, creativity, mystery, and magic.

Popular shades of purple: Indigo, Violet, Lavender, Mauve

Read more about the color purple >>

Making a radical shift right to the opposite end of the color spectrum, we finally arrive at white. In contrast to its darker precursors who exuded mystery, white is the universal symbolic color for purity, wholeness, and innocence. It makes us think of new beginnings, perfection, but also of elegance and serenity. When you have a blank canvas free of any imperfections, you have the freedom to start something new, to let your ideas take contour, and to move in any direction you want.

White is highly creative, and it invites reflection, openness, and awakening. It is a great color for those who want to declutter their minds and spaces, hence why it is often associated with cleanliness and order. The bridal dress and the doctor's uniforms are also white because they represent purity, order, and offer comfort and hope. Similarly, white is also largely found in doctor's offices because it gives a sense of efficiency and perfect cleanliness, which helps patients build trust in the services offered by doctors.

Associated with light, goodness, innocence, purity, and virginity.

Considered to be the color of perfection.

Signifies safety, purity, and cleanliness.

Usually has a positive connotation.

Can represent a successful beginning.

Depicts faith and purity.

Read more about the color white >>

Moving on to black, one of the most complex in meaning colors of the spectrum, we realize that there is no set-in-stone interpretation when it comes to this color. Black is highly versatile and, depending on which angle you approach it from, you can see it as elegant, mysterious, or downright depressing. For this reason, we will dedicate some time to explore the abundance of meanings that have been historically bestowed upon this color.

Read more about the color black >>

More about color psychology and symbolism

Color is, simply stated, broken down white light. This is a dissection of light at different wavelengths and each wavelength is perceived as a separate color. Objects tend to absorb or reflect these wavelengths, so when we see a yellow lemon, it is the yellow wavelength that is being reflected while all others are being absorbed. Now that we have understood what color means, let's explore some of the ways it influences our mood.

We feel color. How or what we feel about it varies from person to person. Some colors give us a sense of serenity and calm; these usually lie within the blue side of the spectrum-that consists of purple and green too, known as the cool side. Others induce rage and make us uncomfortable, or signify passion; these lie within the red spectrum-which includes orange and yellow, known as the warm side.

Color perception is subjective, and certain colors have a very universal significance. This is coded into our reptilian brain, giving us that instinctive feeling of fire being dangerous and the beach being relaxing.

Color psychology is a very important tool used by artists, interior decorators, and as a marketing mechanism in many industries. It is the palette used by Dali that makes his artwork bizarre and amplifies the hyperrealism he intends to create.

When we visit a museum to appreciate a work of art, we take it in through the colors we see because they invoke within us certain emotions, making the claim that everyone sees it differently a reality. Interior decorators survey the effect of colors when deciding what color (Or rather color associations) the walls of a certain area in a building will be painted.

The reason that many offices have a lot of greys, blues, and browns incorporated in their décor is that these colors tend to increase productivity. Yet, this is not a rule of thumb. This does hold true for a corporate environment, but if one were to work say for example in the fashion industry, or the media, the use of brighter and more "colorful" paints would help encourage creativity.

Many car commercials show black as their model because this certain color is associated with affluence and seriousness. This leads the consumer to believe that the product is worth buying. Even the food and drink industry uses color to attract more people to certain brands. The purple and gold packaging of a certain brand of candy bar is a technique to lure the consumer into believing that this is chocolate royalty, and why would one not want to buy the best of best. Culturally speaking, colors have different values attached to them too. A bride in the western world wears white, whereas it is what a widow wears in South Asia.

Color stimulates our brain, and from ancient times has proven to be useful alternative psychotherapy. The Egyptians and Chinese used colors to heal, a process that is known as chromotherapy. Colors were used in order to help the body function better.

However, there is a lot of doubt that prevails today as far as the effectiveness of color therapy is concerned. Since every human being has different emotions attached to different colors, the universal significance of colors may or may not work in these cases.

The bottom line being, color psychology, and associations are an interesting part of the complex working system of our brain, yet with so many scientific questions about it still left unanswered, and differences in cultural attachments to colors, it can only be utilized through observation and experience of how color has influenced brains over the years.

Frequently Asked Questions about The Psychology of Colors
Additional Read: Fun Additional Read: Color Knowledge Additional Read: Mixing Colors Extras:
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Yellow is a bright and fun color that you can see in lots of natural things. It's the color of sunshine, tasty bananas, and pretty flowers like daisies. In this blog post, we're going to take a look at 50 things in nature that are yellow. From the tiny, twinkling lights of fireflies on a summer night to the big,... Read more: 50+ Beautiful Things That are Yellow in Nature

50+ Beautiful Things That are White in Nature

White is a cool and calm color that shows up in lots of places in nature. It's the color of snow, fluffy clouds, and some really pretty flowers. In this blog post, we're going to check out 50 things in nature that are white. From the soft feathers of a swan to the hard shell of an egg, white things... Read more: 50+ Beautiful Things That are White in Nature

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Color Psychology: A Guide for Designers, Marketers & Students

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The guide to color psychology: Understand how colors affect psychology, behavior, and emotions. Learn the meanings and symbolism of different colors.

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Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health

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by Layla McCay, UD/MH Director

Colour therapy is a set of methods for using colours to help cure diseases. With a long history in the annals of complementary and alternative medicine, the 'colour cure' was a popular treatment for mental illness at the turn of the 20th century.

"Patients with acute mania were put in black rooms, patients with melancholia in red rooms; blue and green rooms for the boisterous, and a white room for the person who is practically well."
- Use Colors to Cure Insane, New York Times, October 26, 1902.

While there is little scientific evidence that the various colour-based therapies can cure any particular diseases, the psychology of colour has long been recognised as an important psychological factor in architecture and interior design: colours can evoke spontaneous emotional reactions that can affect mood and stress. This may in turn exert influence mental wellbeing, an effect that is particularly relevant to designers of the interior and exterior built environment.

The impact of colour on how we feel has been explored by architects and designers in all sorts of contexts, from increasing office productivity to improving wellbeing. The colour red is generally said to be associated with an increase in appetite, reduced depression and increased angry feelings, purple with boosting creativity and developing problem-solving skills, orange with optimism, blue with a sense of security and productivity, and green with a sense of harmony and effective decision-making. The potential effects extend beyond single colours: a monotonous colourscape may be associated with irritability and negative ruminations, while highly saturated, intense colour patterns may increase stress.

An interesting blog by Parkin Architects discusses the opportunities for colour to exert mental health impact in healthcare facility design, again pointing to certain colours that, in addition to helping eliminate the 'institutional look' of facilities, might exert specific impacts on mental health.

Rigorous scientific research on the specific impact of colours on mental health is in its infancy. TheFarthing boutique has developed a new infographic that reflects current ideas on the psychology behind the use of different colours to impact responses in various designed environments. Their sharing this infographic with us reminds us that harnessing the use of colour in urban design to promote good mental health is an interesting field that may have potential, warranting further scientific exploration.

This post was written by Layla McCay, Director of the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health, in response to a new infographic developed and shared by Toby Dean and Jessica Morgan of TheFarthing.

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The links between colour, architecture, and mental health

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by Layla McCay, UD/MH Director Colour therapy is a set of methods for using colours to help cure diseases. With a long history in the annals of complementary and alternative medicine, the 'colour cure' was a popular treatment for mental illness at the turn of the 20th century.

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8.2 The Role of Affect: Moods and Emotions – Principles of Social Psychology – 1st International H5P Edition

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Intelligent search from Bing makes it easier to quickly find what you’re looking for and rewards you.

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Even if you've never heard of a zine, chances are you've probably had one in your hands at some point without even knowing. These handmade booklets provide a way for people to share their art, writing, musings, and give a platform to underrepresented and marginalized voices. If you've got something to say, why not use a zine to express yourself? Read on to learn about the history of the zine, and how you can make one yourself.

What is a zine?

Zines are non-commercial, self-published booklets that are typically reproduced using a copy machine. They provide a safe space for their creator to freely express themselves and share their art, words, and thoughts with a chosen (and often niche) audience. Most zines are produced in batches of 1,000 or fewer, and many are produced in editions of less than 100.

A Brief History of the Zine

Before the the Internet, zines allowed people to create networks, share ideas, and creatively collaborate. The first zines were created in the 1930s, when artists rendered their own science fiction fanzines, or "fan magazines." During the Beat generation of the 1950s and 1960s, independent authors self-published zines that explored their views on American culture and politics.

Zines continued to be a medium of expression throughout the 1970s, when they allowed people to have a voice outside of mainstream media. The self-published magazines helped shape the feminist movement, and in the 1980s, the punk scene saw an array of zines dedicated to music and a cultural revolt against authority.

In the 1990s, the riot grrrl movement (an underground feminist punk movement) used zines to reach out to women across the U.S. in order to start a "girl riot" against a society they believed was sexist. The handmade aesthetic of the zines helped visualize the group's "do it yourself" attitude.

The zine is still a much-loved medium today that continues to have a rebellious charm. Many people around the world are continuing to make their own individually designed publications that explore all kinds of subjects, from art and music to poetry and politics. Read on to learn how you can make your own zine.

How to Make a Zine

There are no rules when it comes to making a zine. It can be handmade-using paper and drawing materials-or it can be designed digitally and printed. You could even create a collage-style zine using found images from magazines. It's entirely down to the materials you feel comfortable with, as well as how you'd like your zine to look. So, grab your preferred tools and read on to learn the steps you'll need to take to make your zine a reality.

1. Decide what your zine is going to be about

The idea of self-publishing can be intimidating, but your zine doesn't have to be the next best-selling novel. They typically only contain around eight pages, so the ideal content should be short and fun. Your zine could be about your own personal experiences, or it could tell the story of someone else. Here are some zine ideas to help get your creative juices flowing:

A poetry zine

A photography zine

A comic

A short story

A collection of essays

A little cookbook full of your own recipes

A booklet of cocktail ideas

An informational zine about your favorite subject

An illustrated glossary of terms

A zine about your home country or heritage

A zine about your favorite band

A collection of your favorite quotes

An instruction manual on how to make something

The options are endless! However, if you're not into publishing something solo, why not get together with friends and brainstorm a zine idea you can make as a group?

2. What format will it have?

Zines can take on all kinds of formats, from accordion zines and stitch-bound booklets, to fold-out poster zines and online-only zines. For beginners, there are two simple formats that are super easy to craft yourself at home using printing paper: a mini, eight-page folding zine and a standard A5 booklet.

Keep in mind, if you want to create multiple zines of the same design, use a copy machine to scan and print out multiples of the original artwork.
The Eight-Page Folding Zine
This folding zine format uses just one piece of A4 paper, folded into eight rectangles with a horizontal slit down the center. Each little rectangle represents one page of your zine. Remember that the pages won't be in sequential order when they're laid out flat as one piece of paper. The front page will be on the bottom right, and the back page will be one rectangle to the right. This might sound complicated, but for an easy visual explanation, check out the folding instructions below, plus a video that shows you how it's done.
The A5 Booklet
Making a DIY booklet allows you to decide how many pages your zine will have. You can make one by combining a bunch of A4 paper and folding it in half (so that the left and right sides touch). You can also add a single page at the back of the pile of paper that acts as the front and back cover. This could be a colored page, or a thicker piece of card. For those creating a zine digitally, you can create your layout on Photoshop, InDesign, or any other digital tool you feel comfortable with. Once you're finished, print your pages out, order them, and fold them all together into a booklet. Watch the video below for a more in-depth explanation.

If you make this style of zine, you might want to bind it together at the booklet's spine. (Read on to discover how you can do this in the next section.)

Once you've decided on the format, now it's time for the fun part. Fill your blank pages with your own visuals and writing.

3. How do you want to bind it all together?

Binding your booklet together is the last step to completing your zine. For a simple, quick solution, use a long-armed stapler to staple your pages vertically down the center of the booklet. Use two to three staples to secure your pages, and if you're feeling creative, try using colored ones.

Stitch-binding is another technique that's popular among zine makers, but it takes a little more time. However, this process allows you to add a little more personality to your publication. First, fold your zine in half to make a crease and poke three holes along the fold. Use sewing thread, embroidery thread, or any other yarn that you like to thread through the holes with a simple running or saddle stitch until the pages feel secure. Check out the video below for how to create a saddle stitch.

Your zine is complete! Now it's time to share it with the world.

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Top 8 Art Magazine Subscriptions That Celebrate Creativity in Print 10+ Essential Art Supplies to Help You Start Drawing Your Own Comics 10 Essential Craft Supplies That Are Must-Haves for Your Studio Stash 10 Art Books That Will Nourish Your Creative Soul This Month

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How to Make a Zine: A Guide to Self-Publishing Your Own Miniature Magazine

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If you've got something to say, why not use a zine to express yourself? Learn how to make a zine at home in a few simple steps.

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Upcoming film poster Inspired by the fiction of Andrey Kurkov Glory - Inspired by the book of the same name by NoViolet Bulawayo Laughing towards extinction Third Policeman double page spread Inspired by the short stories of Mariana Enriquez Page from Refuge Refuge double page spread Heinrich and Sabine Capitalist Hellhounds Prague 2023 Third Policeman book cover Image inspired by the book Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo Drawing from Prague 2022 Rats Howl interior illustration A Tory Party Brexit Cakeaters end Think Tanked Howl book cover The Corbyn Comic White hot hate The Realm of the Punisher Beasts of war The Donor’s Ball Prague 2022 - Beggar on Charles Bridge Theatre interior for animation Madness cover art Trump striptease Layout image for animation Oil executives Trump with doll Under the table Love island Trump World War III Illustrated rats Lizard World first panel Madness page Paris reportage Times Square Print Portfolio Madness page Madness page The state of affairs

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The Art of Zine-Making: Empowerment, Expression, and a Glimpse into DIY Culture

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Zines, short for fanzines or magazines, are self-published, small-circulation works of art that embody the essence of DIY (Do It Yourself) culture. These pocket-sized publications have been an inte…