The Aesthetic Trap
Jinyin Guo
Cuteness is not innocent within the context of attention capitalism. It is carefully constructed to attract while concealing systems of manipulation and harm beneath its surface. This thesis examines how cuteness operates beyond a benign aesthetic, arguing that it is deeply entangled with commodity production, media circulation, and emotional consumption. Through visual analysis and interactive experiments, the project demonstrates how design can reveal the dual role of cuteness as both affective and manipulative, encouraging critical reflection on how desire, attention, and patterns of consumption are shaped within contemporary digital culture.
The Aesthetic Trap
A glossary book exploring vocabulary related to cute aesthetics, intertwined with design experiments and collaged imagery that reveal the uncanny, manipulative, and unsettling dimensions hidden beneath cuteness. It allows readers to physically interact with the book and directly experience these tensions for themselves.
The Aesthetic Trap(Book A)
Book A is the glossary section of TAT, organized alphabetically by chapter. Collages of uncanny and cute imagery are inserted at a measured pace, creating a rhythm that makes the book’s tensions more gradual and approachable for readers.
The Aesthetic Trap(Book B)
Book B is a modular flipbook that allows readers to mix and match images, exploring the duality of cuteness through unexpected visual combinations.
(A reader interacting with TAT)
I also placed the book in a toy store to observe how the environment influences the way audiences perceive and interact with it.
How can design expose the mental and physical cost of performing a curated identity?
Through the methodology of Decoration, everyday objects like fruits are excessively ornamented with pinned bowties, revealing how curated aesthetics normalize discomfort, self-discipline, emotional exhaustion, and the sacrifice of personal well-being for visibility and desirability.D' Dolls
Through methodology of amplification, fragments of advertisements or films are repeated, rearranged, and distorted to expose how attention capitalism manipulates desire, perception, and behavior through persuasive commercial language hidden beneath familiarity.
Dissolved Seriousness
Through recreating warning signs with cute materials and aesthetics, Dissolved Seriousness critiques how visual appeal weakens critical judgment, obscures cautionary messages, and manipulates perception within attention capitalism.
The Duality of Cuteness
Through interactive dolls containing sealed waste materials and dark personality traits(https://qst.darkfactor.org/), D Dolls exaggerates cuteness to expose manipulation, self-identification, and hidden psychological structures shaped by capitalist culture.