You Can Easily Curate, Treasure, and Preserve Kids Artwork With Scribble Art by Steve Au
For the young to young-at-heart artists in your life
After admiring your kid’s artwork, do you ever wonder what to do with it? Steve Au, the creator of Scribble Art, came up with an answer. Au has a background in architecture and has had an interest in creating spaces for people to occupy since he was in high school. I think it’s fascinating that this interest translates into his passion project in which parents can gather kids’ artwork and easily use technology to create a beautiful physical book.
The mission of Scribble is adding value to the user and encouraging the creative process.
By the end of our interview, it clicked with me that Au is fostering creativity with children by taking pride in (and photos of) the kids’ art, even 3D projects, like Lego forts, snow people, and dioramas.
It is important to Au that the technology aspect of Scribble is easy for the user. I was compensated a 24-page Scribble book so I can report the user experience directly back to you. Our kids are now 13 and 16. Visual arts have been encouraged by their public schools and us as parents.
We have gobs of art stacked, boxed, on the walls, and lying around. The idea of taking 24 imperfect photos of their art and then Scribble doing the straightening, cropping, and background editing sounded doable to me, a person who gets overwhelmed by paper clutter and walks away from it, a lot. Au is now creating a physical space for kids’ art — an interesting connection back to his architecture days.
I walked around our home snapping photos of clay art, paper art, and even a pressed flower collage I had made and photographed. I decided to include that on the back cover to enjoy some of my own creativity.
Then, we used a print my graphic designer husband made of the kids for the cover. I went meta and named it “ART BOOK.” You can include photos of the artist in the beginning pages.
Scribble was released in October 2022. There are plans for an app, but it is currently a website only. From my FB writer site post-interview, I wrote:
“This morning, I had the pleasure of interviewing Steve Au, creator of Scribble Creativity. It’s such a cool, well-thought out solution to the overwhelm of kids’ artwork. I’ll be sharing an article all about it around the end of March. Meanwhile, check it out. It’s such a fun way to curate and interact with your kids and their artwork.”
A few years ago, my mom handed me artwork from my childhood and it went to the attic. I want to honor my young self, but I don’t know what to do with the stuff. So, I may make my own Scribble art book eventually. Au said that parents of adult children will often make Scribble books to hand them a nice curated gift of artwork from their younger years without adding to any clutter.
Au sees potential for Scribble in the classroom, too. As a parent, we’ve bought art projects at auctions that we felt we had to buy to support the school, but they aren’t always our favorite artwork from our kids. Wouldn’t it be cool to have kids' art in a professional quality book to auction off instead?
The Origin Story
Scribble became Au’s passion project during the COVID-19 pandemic years. His young kids, 6 & 8 then, were at home with a lot more time on their hands than the kids or parents were used to. Au began noticing the many creations they made, “The kids were cranking out art every 15 minutes,” he said. It was interesting to have a “lens into how they’re (the kids are) perceiving the world.” Many adults will look at a blank piece of paper and feel a fear of being judged, not knowing what to put on it. Kids tend to be less inhibited and parents can foster that creative inhibition.
Au says “The edge of chaos can inspire.” In other words, boredom facilitates creativity. How can we foster the quiet moments and encourage them?
Au mentioned that the customer unboxings have been a cool “side effect” of Scribble. As I perused the unboxings, I realized he’s right — Scribble gives adults and kids a chance to be present with each other, admire, and discuss the thoughts behind their creativity. Au mentioned how nice it is to see his kids put their tech down and sit down with their grandparents to peruse the Scribble art books — and they are engaged and present.
Scribble Art books currently cost from $39.99-$49.99.
User Experience
My 13-year-old daughter and I worked on this project together. It was awesome how the website took care of straightening and cropping the images and adding a complementary color to the background. We found it is much easier to create the Scribble Art book on a computer than on a phone. I loved that Scribble Art straightened my imperfect photos, and made the background color look good.
My daughter was the Creative Director on this project and had more patience, and opinions, than me and adjusted page and text colors, which you can do easily. We figured it all out without watching the Scribble Art tutorial.
Below are examples of photographs I uploaded into the Scribble Art website. The before photo is imperfect but there is a recommended background color already present.
The Physical Art Book
My mom recently visited us and it was so much fun looking through this book together. She mentioned that it’s a wonderful family heirloom. I agree.
Here are a few example pages of the 23 inside pages and a back cover image. There is also a front cover image and a title page with photos of everyone in our family on the artist page. It is such a cohesive, collaboration.
Aimée Brown Gramblin is the founder of Age of Empathy. She became a memoirist in her younger years and is writing the stories out now in middle age. A regular contributor to AOE and The Memoirist, Aimée is also a late-blooming pop-culture enthusiast; she’s a contributor to FanFare and The Riff. With a minor in art history, she occasionally publishes art-centric nonfiction.
