Spreading the Quirky: Connecting the Hearts through the Secret Love Project

Anyone notice hearts all over Cape Town?

I couldn’t help but notice hearts popping up randomly on lampposts, junction boxes, street signs and walls around the Cape Town CBD, stickers, paintings, etc popping up all over the city so I did some research to connect the hearts and here’s what I found

Local artist, Michael Elion, is back with another project called the secret love project. It is a social engineering experiment aimed at raising the positive collective consciousness of an entire city through the pervasive application of a universally understood symbol – the heart

The project, inspired by Derren Brown, uses the heart shape because it is an unambiguous global symbol of love. And as we are all undoubtedly affected by the visual world around us, why not signify and represent a symbol aligned with positive emotional content? Basically, Elion is literally trying to spread the message of love to make us happier people for it

Back to raising consciousness, how exactly does that happen? It’s subliminal at first; it starts with a positive symbol, a little heart. After you see one heart you start seeing more hearts, you start to smile more or your mood elevates because we are affected by what we see around us, and for once it’s something we can all identify with, it knows no bounds

The project which is one of the World Design Capital 2014 projects, started simply with heart stickers. It has evolved to so many other things and the hearts are infused into other projects; car guard bibs, bottled water, heart tattoos, love posters, gold teeth hearts, it’s endless. Michael says that he hopes that it moves from being secret to never-ending

More info in their own words:

We are all influenced by the things we see every day; our moods, actions and behaviours are affected by the visual world around us. Is it possible to positively influence the collective consciousness of an entire city through the ubiquitous placement of a commonly understood symbol? A symbol that signifies positive thought processes and is understood across cultural and linguistic barriers.

The heart shape has become an unambiguous symbol of love, globally. It signifies a feeling, represents a mode of perception, and is aligned with positive emotional content. If we notice this symbol everywhere we go in a city, will it influence our perception of the city itself and even change our mood slightly? And could this in turn influence our thought patterns and feelings and possibly influence our actions?

The project operates subliminally but at a conscious level it’s a giant collaboration with a feel-good factor for anyone and everyone who believes in the simple idea of sharing and spreading love. Sticking a heart to your car, or office window or post-box, or front door is simply saying “i like the idea of love in the world and I want to share it”! It amounts to a very small but beautiful act of being human.

Every heart sticker forms part of the artwork, and the artwork itself is a collective feeling, an emotional reaction that this particular shape elicits. If there is any doubt in the validity of the claim of the visual influence of symbols on our consciousness just imagine changing the hearts to swastikas or to the word “hate” and sticking those all over town. The Secret Love Project is an exercise in demonstrating the positive power of symbols (visual language) in human thought and behavior.

How can you get involved?

For anyone who believes in the simple idea of sharing and spreading love, Sticking a heart to your car, or office window, or post-box or front door is simply saying "I like the idea of love in the world and I want to share it!"Every heart sticker forms part of the artwork and the artwork itself is a collective feeling that this shape elicits.

If you are as taken with this project as I am you can get some stickers and paint the town with hearts. There will soon be a heart stencil in different sizes too, for house walls, so all you need to do is make contact and they will come and paint one - free of charge! Now that’s love!

Stickers are currently R5 each and you can buy them at: