The scent of Typography in fragrance advertising

Abstract

Olfaction is not only biologically essential to human life but also culturally. From the utilization of scents in religious ceremonies and burial preparations in ancient Egypt to olfactory-branding nowadays, the sense of smell other than physically, has been explored scientifically as a medium for the expression of psychological and social meanings. The ability of scents to trigger feelings and evoke memories has been central to studies of aroma. Additionally, the sense of smell and its correlation with emotional interpretations seems to be taken into consideration during the visualisation process in fragrance advertising, and is often the case that aromatic bottles as products are assigned with meanings such as sensuality, romanticism, exoticism, sophistication, dynamism etc. The current study aims to present the semiotic aspects of the letterforms used to linguistically visualize the product meanings in fragrance advertising. In doing so, it will not only explore Typography as a semiotic system on its own, but also in respect of the cultural meanings of smell, ‘sprayed’ through fragrance adverts. Semiotic analysis as a methodology is used on a purposive sample of print advertisements to categorize thematically the prevailing exemplars and their typographic rendering. The findings of this study will contribute to the importance of Typography as a semiotic tool, in addition to interpreting product meanings of fragrance advertising in the context of global market.