Yellow Aesthetic | Junk Journal Stuff

Halfway between red and green on the colour wheel, yellow is generally seen as bright, happy, optimistic, and generally positive, while also having strong associations with springtime, the sun, high energy, and overall joy. I like using a yellow aesthetic for springtime or high summer spreads, as a pop colour against blue, green or other cooler backgrounds, or just when I want something that will cheer me up to look at it!

“Yellow is my favourite summer colour – it makes me feel like a sunflower.”
Bria Vinaite

Yellow Aesthetic — created with Canva Pro

The color yellow stretches way back to numerous ancient civilizations, and has played a pretty chunky role in various cultural, artistic, and symbolic contexts. Often associated with sunshine, warmth, and energy, yellow has represented both positive and negative connotations throughout time.

In ancient Egypt, yellow was considered a sacred colour, symbolizing the sun and gold – as the sun was seen as essential to existence, colours associated with it took on revered status. Yellow also had a special place in ancient China, representing the earth element and the centre of the universe in Chinese cosmology. As the imperial colour, yellow was reserved for the emperor, his clothing, and the Forbidden City’s architecture, making it synonymous with power, wealth, and nobility. Back in Europe, during the Middle Ages yellow had more mixed associations, being associated with both saints and religious figures (due to the use of yellow in the halos on their depictions) but also betrayal and deceit; for a long time if a public figure was found guilty of treason their houses were painted yellow (although that was generally the least of their concerns). Yellow had something of a boost in popularity during the Renaissance as artists experimented with all sorts of new techniques and pigments – one of the most famous of course being the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, who used yellow extensively in many of his works, such as “Sunflowers” and “Starry Night,” where he intended for them to evoke warmth, happiness, and emotional intensity.

More recently, the colour yellow has been tied to various social and political movements, typically those associated with liberalism or more right wing libertarianism. For example, the US suffragette movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries used yellow as their main colour, while in Hong Kong and Macau yellow is still the colour of pro-democracy supporters, although in a lot of Asia it is still seen as more of a monarchist colour (used to represent the King of Thailand, for example). Yellow is still very prominent today, from fashion and design to symbolism and communication. In most of the world it generally causes feelings of warmth, energy, and positivity, even if a few throwback terms to the contrary, such as “yellow bellied” (meaning cowardly) still survive in some places.