What mood is that chocolate?
“Brand design is set to become multisensorial”
Articulating the senses. Winning attention and memorability.
By Type Tasting founder Sarah Hyndman.
Evoking mood
I created a chocolate game as a pre-talk activity for my recent multisensory Taste of Time talk for the London Design Festival 2024.
I asked which bar of chocolate would you like the MOST/LEAST?
What would each taste like? ✏ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
What mood does each evoke? ✏ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
However, it wasn’t meant to be a popularity contest. My aim was to demonstrate how instinctively we create visual metaphors for mood. This worked surprisingly well and the descriptions are wonderful, both the positive and the negatives. The results show how important it is that branding elements align with the audience, and more importantly — what happens when they don’t.
(Of course, in the real world our choice of chocolate is affected by many more factors.)
Which would you choose?
How will your answers compare? Check out the results later in this newsletter.
NEW: FOR YOUR TEAM
Synaesthesia Sensorium
Articulating the senses. Forward thinking leaders know that multisensorial brand design wins attention and memorability.
This is an Activity Lab Curiosity Catalyst session designed to tease your team’s senses and tickle their curiosity.
Explore the weirdness of the senses in this experiment-filled session. Discover how the subconscious brain shapes reality and drives behaviour. Curiosity wins in this session. Roll up your sleeve and get experimental. Find out for yourself how words shape reality with actionable insights and “aha” moments.
Find out more / Book this session
Sparks
Ideas to tingle the brain
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I know that C is the convention for medicines. Am I weird that I’d buy B if I saw it in a shop? I mocked these up for my time-travel talk. The idea was to demonstrate context and expectations. But, how I felt about the options surprised me. Which one would you choose?
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Future of Food & Drink Trends 2025
Bompas and Parr are masters of food, design and theatrics. I went along to their Future of Food & Drink Trends 2025 reveal. We were served intriguing tasters. Trigeminal nerve triggering jellies, with a milk somelier on hand in case the heat was too much. Birch bark chocolate gave me a Proustian memory of chocolate and cigarettes (it was surprisingly tasty). And we licked off stones to activate the tongue’s predictive memory of mouthfeel.
Three of the reveals overlap excitingly with chapters in the book I’m writing, more on this another time. I wrote about the Bompas and Parr event here.
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Words influence flavour
Chef Heston Blumenthal and his team at The Fat Duck restaurant have long been believers that words can influence flavour. They have a copy of my book at the Lab. On Instagram. On LinkedIn.
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“Brand design is set to become multisensorial”
The latest issue of Transform Magazine explores how brands can create greater experiences by incorporating multiple senses — from superadditivity to congruence. Read the article here.
Diversity Impacts Meaning
This is the talk I’ll be giving at the Adobe MAX conference next month. I’ll be sharing extracts in the next newsletters.
Each of us sees and experiences the world in our own unique way. In this talk I’ll be exploring cultural, neuro, experiential, physical and perceptual diversity. Understanding how diversity shapes meaning empowers you to create great work, which is creative and emotionally accessible.
Who I work with
🚀 Event organisers looking for an experienced speaker who can engage the audience and create a buzz.
🚀 Leaders who understand that multisensorial brand design wins attention and memorability.
I’m Sarah Hyndman. I’m a designer/researcher, author, speaker and founder of Type Tasting. I create provocations in words and perception designed to tease your team’s senses and to tickle their curiosity. Get in touch if you’d like to chat.
Evoking mood, the results
How talk attendees voted
Liked the least: E (18), C (6), A (4), B (2), D (1)
Liked the most: D (8), C (7), B (6), A (5), E (4)
However, this isn’t a popularity contest. I asked for the most and least liked so I could pair the answers with positive and negative moods.
How do your answers compare?
👀
“Disappointment, superficiality, uninviting, boredom, dissatisfaction”
I find the negative answers so much more interesting. What do you think?
The ‘liked least’ answers show how negative qualities can be amplified when the branding isn’t suited to the audience. When we get it right and all the elements align, the more impactful the experience is going to be.
Chocolate D
Disappointment and little enjoyment.
Happiness, healthiness, stylishness, and playfulness.
Chocolate E
Discomfort, disgust, and superficiality.
Pleasure, autumnal coziness, and excitement.
👀
(Portrait of Sarah in the header by Natalka Design, audience image of Sarah speaking at Glug Birmingham by Jonathan Cherry.)
The results are continued below for paid subscribers. It takes me time to research and write and I’d like to keep it away from being scraped by AI. This is a small subscription (cheaper than a coffee in London), but if you’re low on funds and would like a comped subscription so you can read it, please let me know.