“Graphic design is too one-dimensional” – Sarah Hyndman on her multi-sensory mission
Sarah Hyndman has an experiment she has been running at events for several years. She asks people to sniff two bottles of perfume and then say what they smell in each. Both perfumes are identical – only the typography on the bottles is different.
And yet 72% of participants, nearly three quarters, describe the perfumes differently.
It’s a perfect example of the sorts of insights Hyndman has been sharing through her books, talks, and other projects for the past 12 years.
Having worked as a graphic designer – “one of the original Mac monkeys” – and run her own agency, Hyndman started Type Tasting in 2013, inspired by Stefan Sagmeister’s regular client-free sabbaticals.
She wanted to research type’s ability to influence our other senses, find evidence to back up her intuition, and bring this knowledge to a broad audience (which she does through Type Safaris, and wine-tasting events among others).
Now in her new podcast, Seeing Senses, she is interviewing chefs, psychologists and perfumiers, “to discover how they connect what we see to what we sense and feel.”
We sat down with her to find out why she thinks multi-sensory design might help save the industry.
Sarah Hyndman’s podcast Seeing Senses
How does your podcast build on Type Tasting’s work?
From the outset, Type Tasting was always multi-sensory, but I was looking at typography because it was a niche area. Type was just the gateway into the other senses.
So we start with what you see, vision. Vision is about what gets your attention – that’s what branding and packaging does. But in my opinion, what we’ve forgotten in design is the follow-through – that senses like smell and sound boost the mood more than vision.
So you need to back up the experiences you are designing with all the other senses if you’re going to create an emotional connection, make something feel personal, and create memories.
What does that mean for graphic designers and their work?
I think graphic design, as a term, is too one-dimensional.
The visuals are the flag for your brand, so you can recognise it really quickly. But what does it sound like? What does it smell like? What does it feel like? How does your experience of this product change from location, to moment, to experience?
I think we need to rewrite our job descriptions, so that we start thinking in a multi-sensory way from the outset. Who cares if it wasn’t in the brief? We need to be the challengers, the rebels that are saying “No, I think you need to think about this differently.”
If we keep doing what’s already been done, that’s what AI could do. Our job is to find the gaps, to be the mavericks, and to do the lateral and creative thinking which, at the moment, AI can’t do.
That infamous Future of Jobs report, that said graphic design was at risk of becoming extinct, was a wake-up call.
That report is based on what business leaders think will be important over the next five years. Why is graphic design not seen as a useful skill? And do we need to talk about what it does in a different way?
Yes, absolutely. Leaders need to see designers doing something, or being something, different. It always used to be that clients loved visiting their agencies. Why aren’t businesses excited by designers any more?
I think we need to show people something that makes them say, “Oh, we need that.” Rather than showing them something which will win them awards.
Type Tasting activations at Adobe Max. Photo by Grant Terzakis.
As someone now studying neuroscience, how do you see the relationship between science and creativity?
I did science all the way through school. I’ve never studied graphic design, so nobody ever told me I wasn’t allowed to experiment.
As designers, we’re given permission to come up with solutions that fit the brief, but we’re not somehow given permission to go out and experiment.
And there is a big misconception that science is very rigid, and will take all of your creativity away. Whereas real research is about constantly interrogating every statement. Always asking why, like an annoying five-year-old.
And that same curiosity is key to good design as well, right?
Exactly. But as designers, I think we’ve lost a bit of bravery to do that. So my thing is – think more like a scientist. Science is about proving yourself wrong, and finding what’s right.
The interesting stuff, when it comes to my experiments, are the really weird answers, the outliers. That’s where the magic is – when someone tells you something different, and you discover it’s because they grew up somewhere where that means something else, or they’ve had an experience where that means something else.
A lot of your experiments seem to be very fun – is that an important part of designing them?
If I want people to take part, I have to make them really understandable. I have to make them fun. And if I’m going to gather your data, I need to give you something – some insight or learning.
I did a talk for 1,000 people in Germany not so long ago, where we gave them all pairs of jelly beans, and I played a load of different stimuli, to show how it changed what they tasted.
I talked them through the science of what happens, so that everybody could feel for themselves how it worked.
A Type Tasting event at London Design Festival. Photo by David Owens.
Is there any tension between that sense of fun, that showmanship, and the scientific rigour you are clearly interested in?
I like that I sit in the middle. I think as designers, we are basically showmen. Packaging, branding, everything that we do is about showmanship. It’s about catching attention, selling imagination, sensation transference.
But then in spaces like FMCG, they have consumer neuroscientists, and everything is measured to an infinite degree.
What’s your hope for the podcast, and the new books, you are working on?
Hopefully they will help graphic design to keep changing, so this amazing profession can stay alive, but also evolve as it needs to.
Type Tasting does wine tasting in London. Photo by David Owens.
