A speculative multisensory fragrance system that translates scent into visual and motion based design. It reframes fragrance as an adaptive identity, where emotion and perception shape how the brand is experienced. Scent is not described, but expressed through colour, form, and behaviour.
2025 — 2026
Overview
Context
Fragrance is typically designed as a descriptive and static product, limited to olfactory communication.
Aim
To reposition scent as a responsive sensory system shaped by perception, cognition and emotion.
System Response
Signals operates across physical, digital and spatial layers translating each fragrance into colour, motion and sound behaviours. Packaging functions as a sensory interface while motion and sound extend scent into time based experience.
Packaging Design
The visual language is mathematically derived from EEG data, mapping specific scent profiles to their corresponding neural signatures. This creates a data-driven sensory translation where the frequency of the graphic waveforms directly reflects the neurological state induced by the fragrance.
Delivery Packaging
The home delivery packaging translates each scent's identity across a fully printed surface. Each package carries the scent profile on the back alongside a Spotify code — scan to wear the signal.
Flat-Lay Structural Mapping
Developed a series of custom nets to test the continuity of the data-derived waveforms across physical surfaces. These layouts served as a blueprint for the spatial distribution of the sensory identity, ensuring the 'Signal' remains fluid and uninterrupted once the package is assembled.
Visual Language
Each fragrance within the Signals system is mapped to a specific brainwave state — from the slow, deep Delta waves to the fast, sharp Gamma frequencies. These neural signatures formed the core graphic vocabulary of the identity, with each waveform's character directly shaping the visual language applied across packaging, motion and spatial design.
Motion Design
Motion translates fragrance into rhythmic behaviour, expressing scent through repetition, intensity and movement of pulse. The visual system operates as a continuous signal where energy expands and contracts rather than progressing linearly.
Scent is experienced as a frequency — an ongoing state of activation rather than a fixed moment.
Sound Logic — Burst State
Immediate ignition — Sustained drive — Peak energy — Legacy energy
Spatial Experience
A short behavioural questionnaire assigns users a scent profile that maps to one of four fragrances. The system translates user states into sensory outcomes across taste and space.
Using initial spatial sketches as a foundation, neural rendering was used to explore cinematic lighting and material translucency of the pop-up environment — visualising how the data-derived Signal forms would physically interact with the high-end, immersive retail context of Selfridges.
The System
Input
Scent
Translated into
Sound
Encoded as
Signal
Interpreted as
Taste
Deployed as
Space
A continuous loop between natural origin, designed objects, and collective spatial activation — where noise becomes signal.
