Verisimilitude of illustrative images on industrialized cookie packaging: design, composition, and visual syntax

• Grant number: 24/15976-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: January 01, 2025
• End date: December 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Industrial Design - Visual Programming
• Principal Investigator: Gustavo Orlando Fudaba Curcio
• Grantee: Taly Sincofsky Valdman
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In a sales environment filled with stimuli, it becomes essential to design packaging that can capture the consumer's attention. Among the visual elements that make up packaging, illustrative images are among the most considered in the purchase decision, as they provide a more concrete representation of what the product is-or should be. However, these images do not always reflect reality and are subject to scrutiny under the Consumer Protection Code and Conar regulations, to ensure transparency and protect consumers from misleading practices. Therefore, it is imperative to investigate the verisimilitude of the images used on packaging in relation to the actual product being offered. This Scientific Initiation research plan proposes an analysis of the visual aspects, composition, chromatics, and hierarchy of packaging for industrialized cookies produced in Brazil, with an emphasis on the semantic and syntactic aspects of the illustrative images present. To achieve this, it will be considered methods related to Visual Research (Bestley and Noble, 2013), principles of image generation (Ambrose and Harris, 2009) and their meanings (Jardí, 2014), and observation strategies for acquiring products at retail points of sale (Malhotra, 2019).