An Artivist’s Guide to Uncover Your Artistic Style and Voice: Part 2. Personal Symbols
Welcome back to this mini-series of posts on how to uncover your artistic style and voice as an artivist making artivism for social change. In this second part, we’re jumping into some creative exercises that will help you identify your personal symbols.
Why symbols, though? Well, symbols are a vital component of human expression. They represent something beyond their literal meaning. Personal symbols can emerge as visual motifs, themes, or recurring images that represent deeper aspects of your inner world or the message you want to communicate. Symbols can represent your emotions and beliefs about a certain topic, experiences, unresolved conflicts, and more.
Personal symbols can also offer a type of language to express things that words alone can’t. These symbols can be used in any type of creative work you do, from painting to writing to music or knitting. In anything, really.
This post is inspired by Carl Jung’s work on symbols, archetypes, and the unconscious mind. I’m definitely not an expert on his work; this lesson is only inspired by some of the things I remember from what I learned in school. So, if you’re interested in learning more about this, I recommend exploring his work further.
But, to summarize, Jungian psychology suggests that symbols emerge from the unconscious and can, therefore, be highly personal. These symbols often carry meanings that are specific to an individual's life experiences, perspectives, and psyche, which is why exploring them can enrich your artistic voice and help you develop your unique style as an artivist. Exploring your personal symbols has the potential to add deeper layers of meaning to your work. That sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it?
But, what are personal symbols, and how can we identify them? Let’s start by looking at what personal symbols are before I give you some fun, creative exercises.
Personal Symbols
As mentioned, personal symbols are recurring images, shapes, motifs, or themes that you notice and are drawn to. They can show up:
In your work
In movies and shows you like
In your dreams
You can notice them in the world around you
Etc.
They often have a significant meaning to you, but that meaning might initially be obscure. Which personal symbols that show up for you can also depend on things like:
Your life experiences
Memories
Emotions
Cultural background
The geography of where you grew up
Your relationships with family and friends
Your relationship with the natural world
Etc.
Personal symbols can also manifest in many different forms. They can show up as:
Animals
Numbers
Colors
Objects
Abstract shapes
Natural elements
Etc.
When I explored my own personal symbols in a project at school several years ago, birds often showed up in my work, especially smaller, colorful birds. At first, I had no idea what deeper meaning they had to me, other than that I thought they were beautiful. But as I explored it further and looked into their symbolism, I realized that it was about freedom. It was about breaking free from the cage I felt like I was living in. Since then, I’ve always been interested in birds, and they’ve often shown up in my work, especially in my writing.
In other words, these symbols often act as a language that speaks directly from your inner world. You might not know the message or deeper meaning of your symbols at first, but becoming aware and learning more about them can help you interpret their meanings. And if they resonate deeply with you, you can then use them in your work to make your work more meaningful, authentic, and aligned with your style, voice, and the message you want to communicate.
So, let’s move on to some creative exercises that will help you explore your own personal symbols. Only do the exercises that resonate with you and that you feel called to do, and then leave the rest.
Identify Your Symbols
Explore Your Dreams
The first exercise is to explore your dreams. And by dreams, I mean the ones you have while sleeping.
Exploring the dreams you have while you sleep, in particular the symbols you notice and remember, is a great way to discover symbols buried deeper within your subconscious. The symbols that show up in your dreams are, therefore, often rich with personal meaning.
Here’s what you can do:
Keep a dream journal for the next week or two and write down your dreams as soon as you wake up. Try to record as many details as possible. You can note down specific objects, places, people, or emotions that stood out to you.
After you’ve recorded your dreams for a week or two, review your notes and look for patterns in the form of recurring symbols or images. Your symbols might show up in different forms or in different contexts in your dreams. For example, time might show up as a clock in one dream but a change in seasons in another.
Once you've identified one or several recurring symbols, pick one and take some time to reflect on what that specific symbol might represent. You can do that by asking yourself:
What emotions or memories does this symbol evoke in you?
What does it symbolize in a general sense? (e.g., snakes can symbolize transformation, the color blue can symbolize peace, trees can symbolize wisdom, etc.)
Has the symbol appeared in past dreams or creative works you’ve made?
How might the symbol relate to your past experiences?
How might the symbol relate to the causes and social issues you want to bring awareness to? Or, in contrast, does the symbol reveal what kind of social issues you want to bring awareness to?
How might the symbol relate to your current life and work?
If you, for example, notice the recurring image of a lion showing up in your dreams, consider the lion’s qualities (e.g., strength, courage, leadership) and how these may be relevant to your artivism.
Now, let’s move on to the next exercise.
A Collage of Personal Symbols
This exercise is about finding symbols that resonate with you on a deeper level and making a collage out of them.
This exercise is more about seeking out symbols rather than letting them come to you, as we did in the previous exercise. In this one, we’re letting our intuition guide us to collect the images that resonate with us, so we’re still using our inner guidance system in this exercise.
This exercise also has a 3-step process:
Start by collecting images from magazines, newspapers, old photographs, and other found materials. The aim is to create a collage of images that resonate with you. You can also look at your Pinterest boards if you have one where you collect images that inspire you. Don’t overthink this process. Let your intuition guide you as you look for images and symbols and collect the ones that resonate with you.
You can choose to make your collage in a sketchbook or on a bigger piece of paper or board. If you want to do it digitally, that’s fine too. Do what works best for you and use what you already have available.
Then let your intuition guide you as you put together the collage. You may want to test a few compositional alternatives before you paste/pin them down to create a certain aesthetic or vibe. It’s okay if you don’t use all the images you collected or if you feel like you need a few more to complement the collage. As long as you end up with a collage that resonates with you.
As you work on the collage, notice if certain types of images appear more frequently. Maybe it’s images of eyes, animals, geometric shapes, or numbers. It can also be a certain vibe or color scheme that shows up as a pattern.
Reflect on and analyze the symbols after completing the collage. Take a step back and analyze it. If you want, you can come back to it in a couple of days to get an even fresher perspective on it. Then ask yourself:
What symbols stand out the most to you?
What do they symbolize in a general sense?
How might these symbols relate to your past experiences?
How might the symbol relate to the causes and social issues you want to bring awareness to? Or, in contrast, does the symbol reveal what kind of social issues you want to bring awareness to?
How might these symbols relate to your current life and work?
Symbol Mapping
The third exercise is similar to a mind map, where you dive deeper into your life experiences to identify significant symbols.
Here is the 3-step process:
Begin by drawing a circle in the center of a piece of paper. Write something that represents you in that circle (it can be your name or a phrase that represents you). Then create branches around that circle that represent significant moments in your life. This can include childhood memories, pivotal life events, topics that you feel very strongly about, etc.
For each key moment or experience from your past that you’ve written down, draw or write symbols that come to mind. These are symbolic representations of your experiences. Your symbols can be literal representations (e.g., the image of a house representing your childhood home) or more abstract representations (e.g., a storm for a turbulent time in your life).
Reflect on and analyze your map to identify recurring themes. If you want, you can come back to it in a couple of days to get an even fresher perspective on it. Then ask yourself:
Are there symbols that repeat or seem particularly significant?
What do these symbols mean to you?
What do they symbolize in a general sense?
How might the symbol relate to the causes and social issues you want to bring awareness to? Or, in contrast, does the symbol reveal what kind of social issues you want to bring awareness to?
Have these symbols appeared in past creative works you’ve made?
How could you use them in your creative work going forward?
Reflecting on Personal Symbols in Your Work
The last exercise I’ll share in this post is to keep exploring if any of the symbols that showed up in these exercises have shown up in your creative work. Think about, or look at, your work and ask yourself:
Do any of these symbols you’ve discovered appear in your creative work?
Have these symbols evolved over time, or have they stayed consistent?
How do these symbols enhance or deepen the meaning of your work?
Do they bring awareness and/or strengthen the message you want your work to communicate?
Do you like how you’ve used them?
Do you want to change how you use them from now on?
What other symbols that you’ve discovered in these exercises do you want to use in your work?
How can you use them in your work?
What deeper meaning would they bring to your work?
Would they help you strengthen your message and/or the topic(s) you want to bring awareness to?
Final Words
As you go through the exercises in this post, I want you to remember that personal symbols often evolve as we grow and change, so don’t worry if your symbols shift or transform as you continue on your creative journey. What you discover here isn’t set in stone, but the symbols can be very powerful to explore nonetheless.
Understanding and incorporating your personal symbols into your creative work can help you express your inner world and message more authentically. Symbols give your work layers of meaning and emotional depth, which can also help you create a more powerful connection with your followers and community. Over time, these symbols can become key elements of your work that make it stand out and look uniquely yours.
I also want you to remember that the process of identifying and developing personal symbols is ongoing. Coming back to this post and the exercises regularly can help you stay connected to your personal style, voice, message, and work. And that’s really powerful.
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