Visual Arts EE: Package Design's Influence

[AliciaInWonderland]

My draft was due a few weeks ago but I somehow managed to worm my way out of having to turn it in. My mentor really seems as though she couldn't care less about my essay, which at first I thought was great. Now I realize that this could result in a total disaster. I have a few questions I need answered that she usually tends to ignore/not effectively answer for me. Firstly, my EE question is something along the lines of:

"To what extent does packaging design influence the consumer's choice?"

You're probably thinking "gee, that's really broad." But it's been approved for a while now. Again, this might just be due to my mentor's apathy. Anything I can do to improve this RQ without making MAJOR changes (we're not allowed to at this point)?

Next, I'm wondering about the requirements for a visual arts essay. Yes, I've read the official ones, but c'mon. Since when has IB ever won the clarity award? For my essay, I'm focusing on proving that package design plays a significantly large role in point-of-purchase decisions for products. For this, I'm citing eye-tracking research and the monetary gain of different design launches. Basically, I'm trying to prove how important package design is as an advertising investment. This means that instead of including direct "art" analysis on specific designs, I'm quoting monetary return and research- numbers, not "art." I know I need to include both types of analysis, but I'm having a problem synthesizing them. Specifically, I don't know transition from "this package made this much money" to "ohhhh look at the structural design, use of color, and symbol representation and how it connected on an emotional level with the consumer, yada yada yada." I can't just throw in pictures for the sake of having them. I need to discuss them. But that doesn't really add anything to my point....

ANY help you can give, even if you have no background with my topic whatsoever, would be extremely appreciated. I'm pretty much set on finishing my draft tonight and since my final draft is due on Nov. 6, I'm not expecting to get much revision time. So please help me out.

Any ideas help! Thanks!

[sweetnsimple786]

Alicia,

Dude I have no clue about visual art EEs, but if you're looking to narrow yours, focus on a type of product. Edible goods or electronics or something?

But it really seems like your EE fits better under Economics than Visual Art, even though the design element is there. I don't know if this is something you can do for an EE under this subject.

If I'm wrong, then I think it'd be easier to analyze the design of several different brands/products and then correlate them to the revenue that they've created. And talk about maybe warm colors versus cool colors and the effectiveness relating to the specific product, for one example, but I hope that's not infringing on psychology.