During a recent visit to the Huntington Art Museum in Pasadena, Los Angeles, I noticed an interesting design element: the description of each artwork was displayed on plaques with the exact same color as the background wall. This helped me focus on the text while enhancing the aesthetic harmony of the gallery.
This color choice aligns with the research emphasizing that background color harmony enhances perceived aesthetic appeal as well as comprehension and recall of the associated information. In the research, when the background color complements main objects, it minimizes distractions and creates a seamless viewing experience.
As research suggests, in the Huntington Art museum, I could effortlessly shift my focus between the art and its description. This thoughtful integration of wall and plaque color drew my attention to the content without overpowering the art itself. It shows how a simple design adjustment could enhance the experience of visitors, like me.
Visual appeal is an important consideration in the design of interior service environments because attractiveness influences consumer behavior. Employing both an experiment and a field study, we show that visual complexity reduces a service environment’s attractiveness. Furthermore, we find that the complexity-attractiveness relationship is mediated by processing fluency and its instantaneous affective companion, pleasure. Our findings provide novel insights into the underlying process mechanism involved in channeling the effect of visual complexity on attractiveness. Furthermore, both studies confirm that customers’ field dependence moderates the complexity-fluency relationship and that shopping motivation (i.e., hedonic vs. utilitarian shopping goals) moderates the fluency-pleasure relationship. Our findings suggest that it is generally better to reduce the complexity of interior service environments. To achieve this, service firms should reduce the number of objects in the environment, enhance the visual organization and symmetry of their arrangement, and use fewer colors, textures, and materials.
On a recent visit to the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in Los Angeles, I was struck by the “salon style” display of paintings—a densely arranged presentation that contrasts with today’s minimalistic museum trend.
A “salon style” hang not only looks different from how most museums are arranged today-it also changes the viewer’s experience. Instead of presenting works individually, with lots of space, the crowded layout puts paintings in a network, encouraging comparison and debate. Salon artists felt reaccured if their pictures were hung at eye level, and lamented when they were “skied” close to the ceiling. Placement of particular works was determined by level of detail, the hierarchy of genres (a tradition prioritizing history and religious paintings) and, most importantly, the personal politicis of the Academy.
Unlike the single-piece-focused, widely spaced approach seen in contemporary galleries, salon-style hanging places artworks in close clusters, prompting viewers to think differently. Psychologically, this arrangement affects perception in two ways.
First, works displayed at eye level attract more attention—a phenomenon known as “eye level, buy level.” It is well known that eye-level placement in retail settings drives choices. Similarly, artists historically loved this prime placement, aiming to capture viewers’ gaze.
Second and more importantly, viewers are inclined to compare artworks side by side. This phenomenon aligns with Hsee’s research on “joint evaluation (JE) versus separate evaluation (SE). When items are displayed jointly, people place greater emphasis on attributes that may otherwise be hard to assess, fostering a richer, multi-dimensional engagement with items. In historical salons, this might have encouraged viewers to notice intricate qualities in each painting, which might go overlooked today when artworks are displayed individually in modern galleries.
Building on these insights with another pieces of insights found ten years ago at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, museum directors must carefully consider how presentation contexts shape visitor experiences. Museum visitors, like consumers, are influenced by cognitive biases and contextual cues, making behavioral economics principles crucial for optimizing the museum experience.”
This research demonstrates a less-is-better effect in three contexts: (1) a person giving a $45 scarf as a gift was perceived to be more generous than one giving a $55 coat; (2) an overfilled ice cream serving with 7 oz of ice cream was valued more than an underfilled serving with 8 oz of ice cream; (3) a dinnerware set with 24 intact pieces was judged more favourably than one with 31 intact pieces (including the same 24) plus a few broken ones. This less-is-better effect occurred only when the options were evaluated separately, and reversed itself when the options were juxtaposed. These results are explained in terms of the evaluability hypothesis, which states that separate evaluations of objects are often infuenced by attributes which are easy to evaluate rather than by those which are important.
Background: As the quality of life improves, people’s interest in art increases and their emotional satisfaction becomes important. Companies often apply artwork to their product packages with the aim of satisfying people’s emotions and enhancing their brand value. However, they tend to apply well-known artwork without considering the characteristics of their target consumers. Therefore, this study aims to understand whether people’s preferences for artwork influence their attitudes toward art-infused products.
Methods: We examined whether people’s attitudes toward art-infused products are influenced by their preferences for and the market exposure of artwork. We conducted a study by recruiting 380 undergraduate students in Korea. In the study, we used 6 artworks carefully selected from textbooks and 6 art-infused hypothetical mobile phone cases accordingly.
Results: Our study revealed two findings. First, people’s attitudes toward art-infused products increased as their preferences for the artwork increased (hypothesis 1). Second, the effect of people’s art preferences on their attitudes toward art-infused products was greater when the artwork was less exposed to the market than when it was highly exposed (hypothesis 2).
Conclusions: The results of this study show that when an artwork is selected for product packaging, people’s preferences for the artwork and its market exposure should be considered, suggesting that selecting a well-known artwork is not always the best option. In sum, this study contributes to the academic discussion on mere exposure effect and art marketing, and it provides insights for designers who aim to apply artwork to differentiate their products.
Keywords
Art Preference, Market Exposure, Attitude Toward Art-infused Product, Art Infusion, Mere Exposure
