OUGD403 - Studio Brief 01 - Research into Perfume Brands

Looking into existing perfume brands and companies and their logos acted as a starting point for my own logotype. This allowed me to find essential characteristics and elements which are used in such brands. It became evident fairly quickly that many existing perfume brand use serif fonts in their designs due to their traditional, classic elements which can be seen as communicating class and sophistication or luxury; typically what you want from a perfume brand. Such examples include:

Fig. 1. Giorgio Armani.

Fig. 2. Lancome.

Fig. 3. L'Occitane.

The first modern perfume was produced in 1370 especially for Queen Elizabeth of Hungary. This perfume was known as 'Hungary Water'. Therefore, this strengthens the idea of using a traditional, classy serif typeface in order to represent the origins of perfume as produced for royalty. Bodoni would therefore be considered as a suitable typeface for this brief.

However, many other modern perfumes also use sans-serif fonts, such as:

Fig. 4. Calvin Klein.

Fig. 5. Chanel.

Fig. 6. Dolce & Gabbana.

Sans-serif fonts are seen as more contemporary and clean than serif fonts, which are two more essential characteristics of a perfume brand that make it attractive to an audience, although possibly more guided towards a younger audience, whereas serif fonts are suited to an older demographic due to their traditional style and history.
Futura (being a sans-serif font and one of Vignelli's six basic typefaces) was developed in the 1920's, the same time as the Art Deco era came about. This era has provided inspiration for various perfume brands and packaging, therefore could be considered for use in my own perfume logotype.

Another characteristic of some but not all perfume logotypes is the use of accents and diacritics. These would most generally be used when the origin of the perfume comes from a different country and so naturally use accents and diacritics in their language anyway. An example of this can be seen in Fig. 2. However, I potentially use these to change the pronunciation of my given word or put stress on certain parts. The Latin word praesūmere uses an accented 'u' which I can experiment with in the design of my logotype to reflect ideas of exoticness and uniqueness.