Flying back home for Christmas leaves you with a lot of spare time to wonder around duty free shops.  My favourite section (food apart) would have to be the perfume aisle, it is a gold mine for design, paper and printing process/finishes inspiration.

This sort of place and products (perfume packagings), will most definitely engage all your senses at once. The shops’ music to your hears, the colours popping to your eyes, the smell in the air, the texture of the packagings and the taste of the cold hard cash, all fighting for your attention.

But what gets my attention is the variety and quantity of papers and printing processes or finishes used to create perfume packaging. The design sometimes even wins awards, like the Flower by Kenzo packaging using an Artic Paper stock. All brands and products have their own values that are being transcribed into a printed design piece. This leaves us wondering how much work and research, is used to achieve the right (or wrong) result? I believe science plays a big part in the decision process, whether it is haptic, colour psychology, science of olfaction, demographic studies, print psychology, ect.

Like the packaging itself, the impregnation board (or paper strip used to test fragrance) put up with the same processes and finishes.

As you would expect, all papers used are uncoated but with a finish that can go from textured, rough or smooth. Most existing printing processes and finishes are used, and most of the time, using custom shape for the strip. From a first look, fragrance for men and women use different ‘pallets’ of processes and colours (see pictures). Fragrance for men mainly use angular shapes and simple pallets, with 1 or 2 colour/process maximum. Women perfumes seem to choose a more diverse selection, with varied shapes and richer colour pallets and printing processes, giving the design a more emotional aspect.

The study

But does all this actually reflects the essence of the fragrance itself? Here are two quick analyses of a male and female perfume test strip, to find first elements of response.

I: LOOK by Vera Wang

• “The bold, modern, captivating scent of Vera Wang Look embraces a woman’s confidence and creates a seductive effect through complex textures and layers of fragrance notes.”
• The rectangular test strip, displays an orange print of the fragrance name, the bottle’s shape embossed in a light grey with the embossing topped with a gloss varnish (see picture).
• The colour orange suggest physical comfort and sensuality, while the embossing and varnish will relate (for females) to femininity, glamour and sometimes luxury.

II: dunhill LONDON

• “dunhill LONDON defines masculine elegance through a meeting of quintessential appeal with modern desirability – a charismatic Otiental Fougere fragrance for the modern gentleman.”
• The minimalist design uses blind debossing, the name in silver metallic foil blocking and die cut to shape the strip to the image of the bottle, with a solid black reverse (see picture).
• For males, the embossing may slightly suggests femininity and/or luxury while silver relate to masculinity and luxury. The colour black links with safety, sophistication and excellence.

In the above examples, the fragrance’s values seem to somehow connect/relate with the potential emotions that the processes and finishes used in the design may generate. Like “woman’s confidence” and “seductive” for LOOK, and “masculine elegance” and  “desirability” for the fragrance by dunhill.

This is obviously a simplistic analysis, but it highlights the possible connection between emotions and printed design. emotions that can be predicted and defined by the different processes used, and will most definitely impact on how the product will be perceived and attract its target audience.