What Does the Synesthesia Mean in Perfume Bottle Design?

In the design of perfume bottles, synaesthesia has its unique place where smell and sight can interact and communicate with each other, cleverly transmitting emotions through sensory transfer, thus strengthening people’s feelings. Designers can achieve the unity of form and content in the design of perfume bottles and perfume bottle collar by using synaesthesia of sight and smell, ultimately achieving information communication and emotional connection between consumers and designers.

Perfume bottle design

Perfume is a chemical product whose main components are alcohol, distilled water, and essential oils, which can emit long-lasting, strong, pleasing smells. Because perfume is volatile, perfume bottles are generally made of glass, which has the characteristic of non-corrosiveness and generally does not undergo chemical reactions with chemicals, can store perfume well. Glass also has high transparency, clarity, and extreme plasticity, which can not only demonstrate the texture and color of perfume well, but also exhibit various unique shapes, achieving the unity of practicality and decorative features for perfume bottles. This is why most perfume bottles by perfume bottle company on the market are glass packaging. Therefore, this article mainly explores glass-made perfume bottles.

The meaning of synaesthesia in perfume bottle design

Synaesthesia has always been a topic of concern. In recent years, international scholars have also conducted research on synaesthesia from different dimensions. Synaesthesia is a psychological activity. Some scholars believe that synaesthesia is a kind of illusory thinking, the psychological interaction and communication of different senses that people have produced through association. The essential characteristic of synaesthesia is the exchange of sensations. In short, synaesthesia is based on people’s sensory experience, caused by one sensation and leading to another sensation, thereby achieving emotional communication.

Synaesthesia is widely present in people’s daily lives. People can produce more feelings beyond visual elements through imagination and association of past sensory experiences, which can be abstract, indirect feelings, such as simplicity, peace, gorgeousness, happiness, mystery, and can also be concrete, direct feelings, such as warmth, smoothness, low-pitched, harsh, softness, etc. When describing a beautiful singing voice, people use the word “sweet,” which originally belongs to taste perception, and “beautiful,” which belongs to visual perception, to describe auditory perception. Besides describing the singing voice, “sweet” can also be used to describe a girl's appearance. A sweet and pretty girl can easily be liked and brings pleasant, happy, and beautiful imaginations. In different usage environments, “sweet” can produce different synaesthetic experiences. In the synaesthesia of perfume bottle design, smells have warmth, colors have weight, and warm and cold have images; all sensory organs are interconnected.