There is an interesting article which appeared on the UCSD website recently entitled Beauty in the Brain.

The article is about the perception of beauty and is a very good read for anyone interested in the psychology of aesthetics. The core of the article basically boils down to this: We perceive things as beautiful because they are easy for the human brain to process.

quoting the article: “What you like is a function of what your mind has been trained on,” Winkielman said. “A stimulus becomes attractive if it falls into the average of what you’ve seen and is therefore simple for your brain to process. In our experiments, we show that we can make an arbitrary pattern likeable just by preparing the mind to recognize it quickly.”

To me, this is a mind-blowing concept; a basic mechanism which can be seen everywhere. For example, it seems to explain why some songs 'grow on us' the more times we listen to them or why simple and sharp photos dominate flickr's interestingness section. And it also helps to explain why Hi Monkey is so disturbingly appealing.

If you're like me, you've probably once taken a lot of time to create a complex and elaborate piece of art, and then wondered why your simpler pieces are the ones getting the attention!


I invite you to take a piece of art that is pleasing to you and examine what features make it 'easy on the mind'.

Features you can look out for:

Focus on a single object with little or no clutter
One hugely-dominant colour with supporting colours used sparingly
High contrast & saturation
Simple composition (triangular, circular etc.)
Repeating patterns

...Or better yet, use the list above to help you create your own piece of eye candy!