It is no mystery that a large collective of Athenian artists have taken a backseat to Athens’ musicians. The highly competitive art scene goes relatively unnoticed because of the overbearing music industry that has gripped this town for decades. However, now it is their turn to step into the spotlight.

One local Athenian has made it her initiative to pull the visual arts back into the limelight and bring it to “an equal area of hype” as the music scene – a hefty endeavor, but a noble one.

That initiative began in the summer of 2009 when founder Kim Kirby launched the Young Athenians Creative Agency, a graphic design branding firm.

“There is a lot going on here and I just want to harness it. I figured with this many resources it could grow into a juggernaut of a branding agency if we work hard and play our cards right,” Kirby said.

The idea behind Young Athenians is to convince clients to take a chance on better design and bring “innovative yet appealing” ideas to product design, branding and advertising markets – ridding the community of washed out, visually unappealing commercialism.

“You go to Europe, and ads for air fresheners are slicker than iPod commercials. The standards are higher whereas here the only ad I can remember off the top of my head is the girl on Broad Street with her head in a washer. I want to live in a beautiful world, and it seems commercial art makes up 90% of our daily visual lexicon,” Kirby said.

Young Athenians is a movement to encourage companies to take pride in their appearance and representation and to ultimately decrease the amount of visual pollution that clutters development.

Kirby stresses one point and that is “Businesses have to change. Culture has to change. People have to say no to quark. Everything is too disposable, and no one crafts the way it should be.”

Another positive aspect of this art-inspired agency is that while it strives for beauty everywhere, Kirby has an equally strong desire to put local talent on the map.

She plans to provide a background in business and professional skills to young, rising designers in hopes they can later succeed in the competitive art industry.

She believes Young Athenians is a medium through which talented young artists, who all-too-often go unnoticed, can make their mark in the business by collaborating together on larger projects with more prominent clients.

The agency officially kicked off the summer with two designers, including Kirby, one photographer and two programmers.

“[Young Athenians] gives a name to one whole group of people that have been working together for awhile and gives them an identity, instead of twenty people that have been working together for awhile that have individual names,” said designer Winston Parker. “This gives them one name, and they’re all together, and they all have different skills.”

Thus, Young Athenians was born, bringing local creativity into one centrally organized group.

On the road to rebuild the visual community into an artistic expression and put the Athens art scene on the global map, Kirby said, “The goal now is to hustle and get some much needed security to Athens artists.”