1. Introduction

K-pop, as known as the popular music of South Korea, and now people also use K-pop to explain the entertainment industry in South Korea, such as K-pop idols, K-pop dramas and K-pop variety shows. With the development of K-pop, more and more countries’ fandom cultures are similar to K-pop fandom, even they don’t have the same system of idol-making with K-pop. According to K-pop fandom, there is an interesting phenomenon. The fans make different goods, like slogans, photo cards, from the design to print, also included the process of publicity by themselves, not the entertainment companies. Then they distribute these goods sometimes for free, sometimes for a certain price. These goods are called fan-made goods. Nowadays, not only K-pop fans, but also each country’s local idol fandom, fan-made goods have become an important part of them. The most typical cases are two countries, China and Japan which are closest to South Korea and influenced by the K-pop for a long time.

In recent years, the growth of idol economy has attracted more and more attention from the society. Fandom culture becomes a non-negligible part of the subculture, and even represents the trend of some youngers. Therefore, people can understand the multiple cultures in the current society from various phenomena in the fandom. However, due to the minority and closure of the fandom, there are not many researches focusing on the fandom cultures before. Besides K-pop, the other two culture we have to know is C-pop and J-pop. C-pop means the popular music of China. The same as K-pop, nowadays C-pop also includes the drama, variety show and movie. The J-pop, of course is the popular music of Japan, and includes the drama, variety show and movie. In fact, scholars realized the relationships of C-pop, J-pop and K-pop, such as Comparative Discourse on J-pop and K-pop Hybridity in Contemporary Local Music wrote by Dal Yong JIN in 2020 and The Study of Asian Idol Industry—The Case of China, Japan and South Korea wrote by Deng Yizhen and Li Zhengjian in 2020 [1,2]. Scholars paid more attention to the system of idol-making system, not the fandom. So, it is necessary to have a study focusing on the fandom phenomena.

It is undeniable that C-pop and J-pop are more and more similar to K-pop these years. But due to the different cultures and social structures, the design styles of fan-made goods in these three countries still have some differences. This study will focus on the reasons why the fan-made goods in China, Japan and South Korea have different design styles. According to the study, people can explore the cultural differences of the younger generations in China, Japan and South Korea.

To illustrate the different design styles of the fan-made goods and its reasons in China, Japan and South Korea, this study will be divided into 3 parts. First, there will be a literature review. It will relate to the views of other studies on the current development of the idol industry in China, Japan and South Korea, the fan psychology and behavior patterns of the fandom supporting culture, and the preference for main aesthetics in both traditional culture and current society. Then, it will have a detailed discussions of the reasons with cases on three aspects: background design, main character photo selection and color. At the end, the reasons for the differences in the design of the fan-made goods in China, Japan and South Korea, and the relationship between the subcultures and the mainstream cultures will be given in the conclusion.

2. Literature review

To study the aesthetic of fandom culture, the first important part people have to know is idol industry. Even it sounds unbelievable, in fact C-pop, J-pop and K-pop are influenced by each other. People knows that K-pop was influenced by J-pop, the most typical part is the trainee system. As Deng Yizhen and Li Zhengjian said, both Japan and South Korea have their own trainee systems [2]. The trainee system can ensure that trainees receive professional training in singing and dancing, and even acting, composition, fashion and appearance improvement. The producers those who want to produce an idol group but do not have enough money or personal connections try to produce an underground idol. According to Andre Maffioletti, the underground idols are similar to common idol group, but they get income by holding live and selling goods [3]. And there are few opportunities to sell physical albums on a large scale in mainstream video stores for them. At first, they are called underground idols because most of the live houses were underground. J-pop as the originator of idol industry, its idol-making system is quite complete. Even the underground idols have their own places. But actually, due to the development of K-pop, the problem of J-pop also emerged. In Dal Yong JIN’s opinion, J-pop is now at a turning point[1]. K-pop is good at promoting by social media. Based on Kim Dong Ha, J-pop are affected by K-pop in the following two aspects. First, J-pop was forced to change and started SNS marketing. Second, more and more young Japanese are choosing to challenge the K-pop idol system, including but not limited to reverse entry into the South Korean market [4]. Due to Hiromu Yakura’s study, also COVID-19 pushed the expansion of computer-mediated communication in Japan [5].

Then, comes to C-pop, compared with J-pop and K-pop, C-pop started late. At present, there is not a sufficiently complete system to provide artists with enough performance opportunities. But the fact that the development of C-pop is affected by K-pop and J-pop is unquestionable. According to Yang Siqi, after the big success of <Produce 101>, one of the idol group survival reality shows in South Korea, more and more entertainment companies want to make a super idol group in China [6].

As many scholars have found, the relationships among C-pop, J-pop and K-pop are an important part to study the fandom. C-pop and J-pop influenced by K-pop a lot, so the structure of fandom must be similar. What K-pop brings to C-pop and J-pop is not only the idol system, but also the fandom culture, such as the way to support, fan-made goods, and some special characters in fandom.

Although there are few scholars focus on the fandom, people can still find some interesting fandom phenomena. Based on Su Haiyan’s survey data, there are 73.82% of fans believe that they can gain self-satisfaction by participating in support events [7]. The support events include preparing coffee car to artists, decorating the café and making some cupholders and goods for those who come to the café, preparing paper slogan for concert audience, buying a billboard to promote idols and some others. This is a kind of fandom culture, actually, K-pop fandom culture. But now, C-pop fandom and J-pop fandom start to imitate this kind of event.

Not only the support event, but also the fandom structure, K-pop developed its own characters in fandom, which called ‘Photaku’, people who take photos for idols. The most fan-made goods are produced by the ‘Photakus’. Each ‘Photaku’ has his/her own account on social media, and the account also called ‘home’, so ‘Photaku’ is also called ‘home master’. According to Sugyo Han, Zongmuk Yoon and Joongseek Lee’s introduction, ‘Photaku’ have one main activity and three secondary activities. The main activity is uploading the photos or videos they took. And the three secondary activities are strengthening the competitiveness of their homes, supporting idols by organizing support events and selling fan-made goods which made by themselves [8]. Most ‘Photakus’ have to learn to use professional software to make posters, design goods, edit videos.

As C-pop, J-pop and K-pop have similar idol system and similar fandom culture, but when people talking about the them, there are still many differences. The most important reason is the different mainstream aesthetic cultures in China, South Korea and Japan.

Chinese traditional aesthetic is famous for the implicit beauty. Zhang Pengfei started with the Chinese traditional costumes and analyzed the implicit beauty. In his opinion, the designer pays special attention to the beauty of ‘not showing signs, and flexible’, they do not deliberately pursue numerical accuracy or pure form of objective beauty, but advocating the use of infinite image beauty to express emotions implicitly [9]. In addition to the implicit beauty, the paper also mentioned Cheongsam as an example to emphasize the fusion of traditional aesthetics and modern aesthetics. As Zhang Pengfei said, designers need to clarify their design concepts, combine their understanding of culture to express their emotions naturally, rather than simply imitating [9]. Zhang Yuneng who has the similar opinion with Zhang Pengfei mentioned that Chinese ancient literati and writers often like to use mountains, river, plants and other natural landscapes to entrust their emotions [10]. Unlike the Western aesthetics, the mainstream aesthetic in China is an emotional pursuit instead of the science or the philosophy, which makes Chinese people more likely to choose an emotional design. Therefore, through Chinese design, people often emphasize its cultural background and the author's emotions, rather than the precise calculation formula, such as the golden ratio.

Different from China, nowadays the mainstream of aesthetic in Japan is a new trend and it can be regarded as an aesthetic affected by capital. According to the book <Hello Kitty: The Remarkable Story of Sanrio and the Billion Dollar Feline Phenomenon>, wrote by Belson, K and Bremmer, B, they think Hello Kitty, a character of Sanrio is the origin of Japanese ‘kawaii’culture. ‘Kawaii’, which means cute and lovely, is the mainstream aesthetic in Japan now [11]. Wang Yaqian and Li Chunxiao pointed out that with the increasing pressure in social life in Japan makes Japanese have a mentality of avoidance. They hope to return to the pure and beautiful childhood to relieve the pressure of reality [12]. In terms of degree, cute culture can help people to reduce stress. Some companies seized this opportunity and began to produce a large number of cute-looking products. The ‘kawaii’ culture even led to a phenomenon called ‘Sanrio danshi’, which means the men who like Sanrio characters. Nowadays, ‘kawaii’ is no longer a word that symbolizes women. As the ‘kawaii’ culture is more and more popular in the world, especially Japanese men, who are also influenced by the ‘kawaii’ culture in choosing a spouse, are more inclined to choose lower height and sweet-looking women. At the same time, due to the low status of women in Japanese society, women in Japan in order to gain the favor of men, they have to become as cute as possible in terms of makeup, clothing even the walking posture and their voice. All of these make ‘kawaii’ culture become a cycle and continue to developing.

According to Han Jie, the Koreans pursue a kind of atmosphere called mot. Mot in Korean is wrote as ‘멋’[13]. Although it is hard to explain the meaning of the simple character, we can use a word to understand. First, ‘멋있다’, it means cool, people in Korea use this word to describe someone who has strong atmosphere, or something awesome. So the ‘멋’ is not only an appearance concept. The paper pointed out that ‘멋’ is a dynamic aesthetics. Koreans make some deformations on the balanced pictures, which is called instability, irregularity and unbalanced. In order to achieve this effect, Koreans choose lines to express their aesthetic. This kind of aesthetics still affects Koreans today, the most typical example is their national flag.

Although all of these are talking about the mainstream aesthetics, and seems like far from the fandom culture. In fact, as a part of subculture, it must be influenced by the mainstream cultures. Therefore, people cannot separate the fandom culture from the mainstream culture. Similarly, the aesthetic phenomenon in fandom culture cannot be separated from the mainstream aesthetics. Whether it is the same or the opposite, it is always affected by the mainstream aesthetics.

3. Analysis

3.1. Differences of background

In the past, the entertainment company always produced lots of goods for fans to get more profit, which called official goods. But nowadays, more and more fan-made goods appeared in C-pop, J-pop and K-pop. Especially the slogan, due to its small size for bringing into the live hall and low cost, it has become one of the most typical fan-made goods. However, the designs of slogan in China, Japan and South Korea are quite different from each other. In C-pop, people prefer to using lots of elements to fill the background and emphasize the main emotion or subject of the slogan. But in J-pop, people prefer to using geometric shapes and animation characters to show their cuteness as much as possible. In K-pop, the design of background is much simpler, they emphasize the main character by only one or two colors of background and some lines. Then, there will be divided into three parts to illustrate different backgrounds of slogan in three countries by some samples, and analyze the reasons for these differences.

Fig.1 and Fig.2 are slogans of Liu Yu, who finally debuted as a center in one of C-pop survival idol-making reality shows. In the first slogan poster, there are three kinds of slogan, and all of the slogans have the same title called the plan of adventure, which is the title of his performance as well. Focusing on the background of these three slogans, it is not hard to find that the designer chose a dark color as a main color of the background, and many English words to decorate the background, some white scratches and even the main picture without the whole face. There are so many points in each slogan, the words, the decorations, the planet, and the main picture, so it looks gorgeous and impressive. And this is the most important feature of C-pop fan-made slogan. In order to convey the same artistic conception as the stage concept, the designer chose elements with mysterious colors such as planets and clouds. This kind of combination reminds people of the universe and a sense of vastness. The second style is totally different from the first one, but the same feature is that both kinds of design have complicated background. The slogan is divided by the comic grid and filled with a large number of color blocks to make it full. By comparing the hand-painted style with the character’s photos, the main character can be emphasized even with the almost no-blank-background.

This kind of design is not limited in C-pop fandom. In fact, from the traditional Chinese culture, people can also capture the existence of cumbersome beauty, such as, Chinese traditional national costumes, Chinese knots, and even traditional characters also reveal the Chinese love for the fusion of different elements. This is an aesthetic preference with national characteristics. What it pursues is the expression of emotion and the unity and flexibility of feelings and imagines. In addition, based on Chinese huge population and the pursuit of the integration of emotion and scenery in traditional aesthetics, the design in C-pop can reflect the designer’s own thoughts best and the designs are far from each other. It blends a large number of materials to render the emotional atmosphere, and then sets off the image of the main character.

Then, the fandom of J-pop shows people another kind of style on design. These pictures are the survival idol-making reality shows’ supporting slogans. Excepting the skills, Fig.3 and Fig.4 two slogans show the Japanese cuteness culture well. The first one has a bright color for its background and full of triangles for decoration. In the second slogan, the designer used the check image as the background which is the most typical design in J-pop fandom. Not only the slogans, but also ‘tag pics’, which are used to introduce the user of the account on Twitter. This kind of design makes people feel that the designer is a middle or high school student, may be not too tall but cute. No matter how the designer is, J-pop fandom’s fan-made goods are used to show the designer’s image, but not for promote function. In fact, the fan-made goods are not a traditional fandom culture of J-pop fandom, so the traditional fandom continued their own aesthetic.

The reasons for this phenomenon are the pursuit of cuteness culture. As mentioned in the previous article, Sanrio pioneered the Japanese pursuit of cuteness. In fan-made goods and Japanese unique Uchiwa supporting culture, which means hand-made fan, is not a kind of supporting culture. People can see many designs that incorporate Sanrio characters. Obviously, it has become one of the cultural symbols of Japan. Another important reason why the Japanese design the slogan so cute is related to their clothes. In Japan, people can find many young girls wearing pink shirts and black skirts with a lot of bow and lace. This is the most popular type of clothes among Japanese young girls. It emphasizes the petite and cute features of Japanese girls. It has become the main aesthetic in Japan, especially among youngers. So, there are many fans prefer to wearing this kind of clothes to participate idols’ lives. In order to match this cute outfit, they prefer the cute design of slogan. In another words, in J-pop, people make goods are no longer for promoting, but to convey their ingenuity and petiteness to their idols.

Finally, K-pop can almost be used as the originator of fan-made goods, and it has its own style in design. If J-pop, who was influenced by K-pop and started to produce the fan-made goods culture, is called an imitator, then K-pop is the teacher who teaches him the formula. Unlike C-pop, K-pop fan-made goods have a high degree of similarity even with different artists and designers.

Fig.5 and Fig.6 two samples are designed by different person, but they used the same way on the background. Only two colors are used for the two kinds of slogans, and one side is spread out in a single color. This is the biggest feature of K-pop fan-made goods’ design. They are more inclined to use the simplest background, such as a single color, two-color gradient, then plus a line frame to circle the subject to emphasize its existence.

Undoubtedly, K-pop’s design is simple and clear. They are good at using lines to make the simple background has more fun. It shows their ultimate pursuit of simple beauty and lines. Even in the whole poster, there is no unnecessary information. It can make people notice the main character at a glance. This kind of design can be said that it is the experience accumulation of experience over the years.

There are two reasons can explain why K-pop slogan becomes more and more simple and similar to each other. The first reason is the traditional aesthetic of South Korea. According to the above articles, people in South Korea prefer to using some lines to express their aesthetic. They make some deformations on the balanced pictures to build the atmosphere ‘mot’. This aesthetic is also reflected in their slogan design. The second reason is the systematization of related industries caused by the maturity of K-pop. As one of the main industries of South Korea, K-pop has driven the growth of related industries. The needs of idol goods simulated the development of the independent design industry. In other words, the design of K-pop slogan is not all from the fans themselves, but mostly from professional independent designers. In order to maintain the number of orders, if one certain template has been recognized by most people, then there is no need to make changes on it. Therefore, the styles and typography of individual designers are becoming more and more similar.

After analyzing the differences on background design, people can find that the features of C-pop, J-pop and K-pop designs are highly consistent with the mainstream aesthetics of each country. In addition, the aesthetics of the design also affects the impression of other people in the society on fandom culture. Therefore, it can be considered as a tendency that design of fan-made goods seeks a kind of recognition from the mainstream culture and aesthetics.

3.2. Main character photo choosing

After talking about the background design, there comes to the choosing of main character. Of course, which photo to choose for the goods depends on the designer’s own preferences. However, the differences of idol systems in C-pop, K-pop and J-pop and the gap in copyright awareness leads to certain restrictions or different focuses on the selection of photos.

For the C-pop fans, when making goods, it is not only necessary to choose photos that they like or with better data, but also to always pay attention to whether other fans have made some fan-made goods with the similar photo. In C-pop, the big problem is that the debuted idols do not have enough stages for their performance. People can see that after the debut of C-pop idols, more activities are carried out as brand spokespersons, show guests and actors or actresses. Therefore, when C-pop fans select pictures, they will focus on selecting certain public activities that can be photographed, such as public fan meetings, the attendance of commercial endorsements, etc. It makes photos taken by fans may look similar. So, if someone has already used a certain photo as the main character photo of his or her fan-made goods, then other fans will exclude those similar pictures when choosing their main photos for the goods to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings.

The situation of J-pop is not as complicated as it in C-pop. Japan’s strict portrait rights and copyright regulations have resulted in the fact that there are no home masters or photo-taking fans in their local idol industry. In the local idol industry, like Johnny & Associates, Inc., the biggest male talented agency in Japan, they even do not allow any broadcasting company to use photos of their artists in the show. Besides, the underground idols, they also have strict rules about taking photo. During their rules, fans who take photo or video during the live will be banned from participating in any activities of this idol. Even the idol-making TV programs, also do not allow the fans to take any photos or videos. For them, the only pictures that can be chose, and can meet the printing standards are the official high-definition pictures. Therefore, there will be an official picture which is used by different people to make different fan-made goods in J-pop.

In K-pop, the photo choosing of fan-made goods is the freest. South Korea has the most music shows for idols, even the stages are not allowed fans to take photos or videos, it is allowed to take photos on idols’ walking way to work. Some small entertainment companies need fans to take photos to help them promote. For the companies, this is a free publicity opportunity. Therefore, some small companies will even specifically ask the artists to pose for the fans to shoot, and respond to the various requests of the fans along the way. Although some larger companies do not need this kind of free publicity, because of the company's image, they will not order a prohibition unless some security incident occurs. At the same time, K-pop idols will carry out a large number of activities during the promote period after they release their albums, which called comeback period in South Korea. Almost all of these events, such as fan signs, fan meetings and commercial stages, allow fans to take photo. It can be seen from this that K-pop fans have a variety of idol photos to choose from when making their goods. So, when they choose the main character photo, they will consider which photo is more in line with the style designer wants for this time, and which photo reflects the idol’s charm best. Even many fans will agree on their own poses with idols, and use these photos to make the goods. Such photos are a better identification mark than their logos.

Through the differences in the idol system of C-pop, J-pop and K-pop and the gap in copyright awareness, it is not difficult to see that fans of C-pop and K-pop are more inclined to use photos taken by themselves as the main character photos of their fan-made goods. It is related to the similar idol system and fandom structures. They don't mind too much whether the companies will ban fans from taking photos, especially at some concerts. But on the contrary, J-pop’s companies are very strict with fans, reporters and other commercial activities using photos of their artists. In this environment, even under the influence of K-pop, the culture of fan-made goods began, still did not affect the protection of portrait rights and copyrights in their idol industry. Of course, whether these entertainment companies in Japan will change their approach in the future, is not easy to draw conclusions now.

3.3. Color

Different traditional cultures have different interpretations. Similarly, the definition of color in the fandom culture also has its own unique meaning. In the fandom culture, whether it is C-pop, J-pop or K-pop, there is a concept called ‘supporting color’, also called ‘member color’. The supporting color is an official color designated by the entertainment company for a group or artist as its representative color, which was initially just a broad color concept such as red, blue, etc.

In South Korea, as the idol industry develops and more and more artists debut, the original broad color definition becomes gradually refined, for example, special color terms such as royal blue and pearl gold. Of course, during this period, the refinement only stopped at the naming of colors. Now, the supporting color does not necessarily refer to a particular color alone, more and more companies are choosing to use gradient colors to prevent the situation of having the same supporting color as other groups or artists. These companies will clearly give the color code while releasing the supporting color, and some companies will even add glitter as an embellishment, which has become a new trend. Of course, there are also more and more companies in South Korea that choose not to have a supporting color, which is due to the change in the way of fans supporting in K-pop. Nowadays, the light sticks as well as printing goods could gradually show less colors, so the existence of supporting colors became less and less meaningful in K-pop. Therefore, when fans design their goods, the choice of color rarely takes precedence over the supporting color, and depends more on the dominant color of the character’s photo chosen by the designer. And the color scheme is also largely dependent on the various colors that appear in the photos. Such method can reduce the differences in color display caused by printing and different electronic device screens. This is also a conservative approach to color selection that can receive more favorites from others.

In C-pop, as the idol industry is still at an early stage of development, the concept of supporting color is more similar to the second and third periods of its transformation in K-pop. Since C-pop idols are more often selected through the survival shows to debut as a limited group, the fans are more focused on the individual than the group as a whole, so even though idol groups have their official supporting colors, the personal preferences and design styles of the designers are also favored when making the goods of the individual members. In terms of color scheme, the C-pop fan-made goods are very bold in its choice of colors and has the charm of traditional Chinese culture. It has a lot of high-saturation and high-contrast colors, and it will choose a lot of contrast colors to make it look more eye-catching. But at the same time, the C-pop fan-made goods will have some restrictions on the choice of colors for the names of idols. As the Chinese tradition, writing the name in red often represents a dead person, so in the printed products, the Chinese are still more taboo to decorate the name with red, this feature also continues to the fandom culture. Although we still see artists today who use red as his or her supporting color, including Chinese fans of J-pop and K-pop idols, even if the supporting color for these idols is red, it is rare to see Chinese fans who will write their names directly in red.

In Japan, the culture of supporting colors has always been personal. The common supporting colors are mainly, red, green, blue, yellow, purple, orange, and pink. In Japan, black represents gorgeous and noble, while white symbolizes purity. In Japanese traditional culture, black kimono is considered the most gorgeous and noble symbol, while the wedding clothes of women are often pure white when they get married, so the traditional culture makes black and white relatively rare in the J-pop idol industry. It is also worth mentioning that since black cannot be conveyed in the form of light sticks at the performance, some companies will tell the member whose supporting color is black that his light stick’s color is blue or other. In J-pop, the supporting color is more like a label which are used more to differentiate the role of each individual in the group. For example, the center of the team is often red, blue is often the captain's supporting color, yellow and orange members are more cheerful and smiley, and pink members may be the youngest or the cutest. These colors reflect the character and role of the members to some extent, so fans are very obsessed with the supporting colors. In terms of choosing colors for the fan-made goods, if the artist has an established supporting color, then fans will prefer it as the main color. At the same time, since J-pop supporting colors are a concept within a group, there is no question of plagiarism even if members of different groups have the same supporting color. As long as there is no clear color code given officially, people will be recognized as a fan of blue member whether they use dark blue or light blue as the main color of their fan-made goods. In terms of color scheme, the J-pop fandom is deeply influenced by the culture of cuteness, fans prefer light colors than dark color and decorate with white and light gray. Their color saturation and contrast of printed products are not high.

In summary, people can know that the main reasons which influence the choice of fan-made goods’ colors in the fandom culture are the supporting colors and the aesthetics recognized by the public. Among them, some inherent concepts of colors in traditional cultures may influence the use of colors in idol culture, and the mainstream aesthetics of different societies directly affect the color schemes.

4. Conclusions

This report has discussed the differences in the design of fan-made goods in C-pop, J-pop and K-pop. Through the analysis and comparison of background design, main character picture selection and color, people can find that there are three main reasons for the design differences among the similar fandom culture in China, Japan and South Korea. The first reason is the different degree of development of the idol industry in China, Japan and South Korea. The second one is the understanding of beauty in traditional culture and some cultural inherent concepts. The last reason is the mainstream aesthetics of contemporary society.

In the above conclusion, it is easy to see that the fandom culture, as one of the subcultures that have received much attention in recent years, can reflect to a certain extent that the aesthetic preferences of the subculture are closely related to the traditional culture and the mainstream aesthetics. While subculture is defined as a non-mainstream, localized cultural phenomenon, it can be misunderstood as a rebellious cultural phenomenon opposite to the mainstream culture. But in fact, through the study, it is easy to see that the aesthetic trend of the subcultures and the mainstream aesthetic is actually similar or even unified. Among them, the development of the relevant industry makes the audience group gradually become large, the mainstream aesthetic will become one of its main criteria, while the traditional culture will be specifically reflected in the handling of details. In other words, the subculture, whose audience is mostly young people, is actually a reflection of the current social culture and aesthetics of each country. As the youngers grow up and get hold of certain social resources, they will have some initiative over the mainstream culture, and the subculture they like will invade the mainstream culture.

Therefore, by studying a specific group of subcultures, people can understand the cultural and aesthetic tendencies of the current society and its tolerance of multiculturalism. Even it may help people to predict future trends in mainstream culture. So, people can explore the creativity and development of the younger generations.