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Interview: How to create a scent logo for Odeuropa?

27 November 202025 November 2020 by Marieke van Erp

Scent logos are mostly subtle signature scents of products or brands, distributed in shops and hotels to – usually subconsciously – convey a sense of authenticity for the public. But how do you design a scent for an academic research project? Caro Verbeek, olfactory art historian, interviewed olfactory artist Frank Bloem, founder  of The Snifferoo about his design of the Odeuropa scent logo.

Frank Bloem scent DJing

Most people have unconsciously smelled logos before, but they probably aren’t aware of it. Can you explain what a scent logo is?

A scent logo is usually a signature scent by which one recognises a product or a brand. For instance, the products by Apple are perfumed, when you unpack them you (often subconsciously) sense that this is a genuine Apple product. Or a hotel lures you to the breakfast buffet by diffusing the smell of coffee.

In what way does the olfactory logo you designed for Odeuropa connect to the aim of the project?

Because Odeuropa is all about scents I thought the smell should be more manifest than is usually the case in scent logos. I kind of ‘deconstructed’ the formula of the logo into individual components, similar to Odeuropa’s aim to open archives and unveil European heritage scents. Therefore, I used the letters from ‘Odeuropa’ as initials of odorants which have historical significance for Europe: the ‘O’ for ‘ozone’ and ‘R’ for ‘rosemary’ for instance. Together these scents blend in as a new whole.

You also selected ingredients such as ‘eugenol’ and ‘olibanum’ and even the highly cryptic ‘para cresyl acetate’. This sounds like the language of a chemist. What do these words mean?

They are the molecules and odour compounds I work with. Some are chemical constructs like ‘para-cresyl acetate’, which smells like horse manure: an important heritage scent for both rural and urban communities. Olibanum is the aromatic resin of the Boswellia shrub, also known as frankincense. The resin is both used in religious rituals, as in perfumery. Ozone is a smell that we sense in the air after a thunderstorm, which is caused by electricity in the air. But it is also the pleasant smell of your electric equipment. As the Odeuropa team consists of a large group of computer scientists, this scent refers to their work environment.

How did you align the scent with the visual counterpart which was created by the renowned smell mapper Kate McLean? 

The visual logo is highly ‘smellable’ because of its smoke-like evaporating structure. It is almost as though the visual logo radiates the perfume I created.

You decided to make the recipe available to everyone, open source. Usually the world of scent and perfume is shrouded in mystery and secrecy. Why did you make this remarkable choice?

Odeuropa is a platform that is bound to unveil the secrecy around smell by opening up archives of the past to a broad audience, in search of the components of sensory history. Accessibility and open source are key to the Odeuropa project. As an artist I too wanted to break with the traditional secrecy of smell and perfumery. This way, everyone can re-create the logo for themselves.

 

Odeuropa scent logo card
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About Us

Odeuropa bundles expertise in sensory mining and olfactory heritage. We develop novel methods to collect information about smell from (digital) text and image collections.

Recent Posts

  • Opening the fragrant conversation 18 January 2021
  • Paper: Towards Olfactory Information Extraction from Text – A Case Study on Detecting Smell Experiences in Novels 14 December 2020
  • Creating the visual identity of a project on smell 10 December 2020
  • Interview: How to create a scent logo for Odeuropa? 25 November 2020
  • New Ph.D. position available in Odeuropa project (ARU Cambridge & VU Amsterdam) 18 November 2020
  • Odeuropa awarded €2.8M grant for research project on European olfactory heritage and sensory mining 17 November 2020
  • Seeing by Smelling – How to Enhance the Experience for Blind and Low Sighted People in a Museum of ‘Visual’ Art 4 November 2020
  • Privy histories / Secrete(n) geschiedenis. Fighting stink in the ‘Golden Age’ 15 September 2020

RSS Nose Network

  • The Smells of Winter 24 December 2020
  • All I Want for Christmas is Myrrh 22 December 2020
  • Diving into Nose Dive(s) 30 November 2020
  • Odeuropa! 18 November 2020
  • Caro Verbeek’s PhD project “In Search of Lost Scents” – A summary 16 November 2020
  • 20 years of Reuksmaakstoornis.nl 12 November 2020
  • Release your inner cave man: do you choose the same foods as your ancestors? 5 November 2020
  • An update on smell/taste loss with Covid-19 from GCCR 4 November 2020
  • Human chemical communication via body odour 12 October 2020
  • Interview with Caro Verbeek dedicated to the sense of smell 12 October 2020

RSS Futurist Scents

  • When an eating designer loses her sense of smell, and turns her disadvantage into creative research – The Marije Vogelzang interview 16 December 2020
  • Seeing People Smelling: an Act of Contemplation 11 November 2020
  • Knowing by Sensing: a Course on Smelling, Tasting and Hearing for Academics 2 November 2020
  • Seeing by Smelling – How to Enhance the Experience for Blind and Low Sighted People in a Museum of ‘Visual’ Art 14 July 2020
  • ‘Odori spiralici’ and ‘Aeroprofumi’ – the Unique Olfactory Vocabulary of the Futurists 10 June 2020
  • Smelling Time? – On Scent as a Vanitas Symbol in Art 10 June 2020
  • When an Olfactory Artist Loses Her Sense of Smell – An Interview with Josely Carvalho on Dealing with Corona 2 May 2020
  • Smelling Transformations in Times of Corona – The Revival of Turkish Cologne-Culture 23 April 2020
  • How People Fought Diseases in the Past: a Top 10 of the Most Potent Smells 22 April 2020
  • ‘Gij zult niet ruiken uit ijdelheid!’ – een unieke allegorie van de reuk 22 April 2020

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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004469

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