An Aesthetic Model for Popular Illustration

Abstract

Although the aesthetic experience of popular illustrations is frequent in modern life, no scientific research can fully explain its psychological structure so far. This study aims to develop an aesthetic model of perception, affection, and cognition, presenting an aesthetic psychological framework for contemporary popular illustration. Thirty representative illustrations were selected as experimental stimuli from design media, and a seven-point scale with 10 paired adjectives of underlying psychological factors was built by analyzing systematic aesthetic researches by literature review. A total of 386 volunteers were recruited for the experimental survey. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) through structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to confirm the proposed model. The results showed that beauty, pleasure, and interestingness are the optimum indicators measuring the aesthetic experience of popular illustrations, and instead of the underlying meanings, the positive self-rewarding quality makes aesthetic experience of popular illustrations special.