We all became aware of the japanese cuteness obsession when we first saw Hello Kitty. Stores are now flooded with products with this cute little character that represents everything you need to know about cute in Japan.

Maybe it’s hard to understand cute, pink, happy and colourfull for Europeans and Americans, but cuteness is kind of mainstream in Japan. Products, packages, people, they way they act… it’s all cute, cuter and the cutest. ^_^

Cute (japanese ‘kawaii’) once became global and Hello Kitty inspired designers and illustrators all over the world to try to create an alternative that would become at least half that recognizable as Hello Kitty is today.

There is one specific designer/illustrator that I’d like to mention because of her hard work, volume, type and wideness of work she has done to promote her own cute characters. She attracted my attention because of the refined style, vector drawing technique, colour combinations and variety of design outputs she has made over the past few years. Her characters are named Charuca and have everything (if not more) that Hello Kitty had when she went global.

The author of Charuca is a woman in is not japanese, she comes from Barcelona, Spain. Recently she licensed her characters and made a brand, transformed her blog into a shopping website and managed to sell her characters in various forms in stores.

Charuca is a proof that everyone can make it, even the smallest designer with a talent from anywhere in the world.

And remember: not everyone wants cute, sometimes ‘emotional’ or ‘likeable’ is just enough