Creative Community Demystified: A Statistical Overview of Behance

Abstract: Online communities are changing the ways that creative professionals such as artists and designers share ideas, receive feedback, and find inspiration. While they became increasingly popular, there have been few studies so far. In this paper, we investigate Behance, an online community site for creatives to maintain relationships with others and showcase their works from various fields such as graphic design, illustration, photography, and fashion. We take a quantitative approach to study three research questions about the site. What attract followers and appreciation of artworks on Behance? what patterns of activity exist around topics? And, lastly, does color play a role in attracting appreciation? In summary, being male suggests more followers and appreciations, most users focus on a few topics, and grayscale colors mean fewer appreciations. This work serves as a preliminary overview of a creative community that later studies can build on.