Research Topics

I've always had an interest in visual rhetoric and how it influences people. A couple semesters ago, I looked into costume design as visual rhetoric, and that was very interesting to go into. I would maybe like to go on another branch of that, looking at another aspect that hasn't really been delved into much. I actually recently read the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, and that briefly touched on how different images evoked different reactions from people that helped to differentiate extrovert and introvert personality traits. Something like that could be interesting to go down a rabbit hole into.

Frances's idea of analyzing book covers kind of made me think about perhaps looking at the visual rhetoric of album covers. that could be interesting to see as well, the trends of what's popular and attractive to people. 

TOPIC

GOAL

QUESTIONS

TYPE

METHODS

Album covers

Understand what covers are popular or if this affects music listening

Do introverts and extroverts react to album covers differently? What covers are effective?

Empirical or evaluative

Literature review, mixed methods

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

  1. Merika MoffattAugust 24, 2025 at 6:53 PM

    The book title alone has me interested. It would be interesting to delve into that rabbit hole by reading the keywords, which focus on interpersonal, intrapersonal, and some nonverbal communication. How people communicate with the world around them has always fascinated me, but going further into images, as you said, to compose an infographic, for example, to appeal to an introvert or an extrovert, or finding common ground to appeal to both, would be interesting.

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  2. Brynn JensonAugust 26, 2025 at 8:34 PM

    Building on what Merika said, I agree that it would be really interesting to see what design strategies could affect engagement from people who classify themselves as introverted or extroverted (or both). It would be interesting to look at art across genres (book covers, album covers, movie posters) and look for characteristics of designs directed towards introverts and extroverts and propose conclusions as to what the creator might have been aiming to achieve OR what the design tells us about what kind of audience the creator intended to reach. But also, maybe it's not that deep? It could be interesting! Maybe it's subconscious haha.

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