RACHEL YOON

ELEMENTS OF CUTE(?)

Adobe Photoshop
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Illustrator
Clip Studio Paint

In the context of aesthetics or actions, “cute” is considered to be endearing, pleasing, or charming. Usually we find soft, round, small, or delicate things as adorable, whether they are inanimate objects or a living thing. Despite its lack of name, this emotion that is evoked by cuteness has been well recognized and used by marketers and in advertisements with appealing characters for commercial and charity products, environmental campaigns, and in product design. With this in mind, I explored and observed what the main qualities of a cute(?) character might be within a consumer-based environment and created characters of my own based on found information and observations.

EXPERIMENTAL SKETCHES BASED ON LISTED KEY POINTS:

︎expressionless/stoic: can imagine characters in any emotion

︎recognizable silhouette

︎rounded shapes

︎head is enlarged and the body is shrunken

︎presentation is always asymmetrical

︎no perfect circles for individuality

︎simplistic shapes and vibrant color choices

FINALIZED POSTER DESIGN OF NEW CHARACTERS:

As the next step, I decided to solely use the characters I’ve drawn and disassemble them by body parts and features. I then placed all the elements of the characters into an interactive website and allowed others to try using the parts to make cute(?) characters of their own.

︎Color was later added into the website to see if the creation of the character would be influenced by different tones.

All of the new characters created by the audience were then collected and grouped into a collaborative cute(?) character collage. This was in hopes of determining whether the elements that individuals have utilized within my group of characters were still able to create more that are still cute(?).