A redesign at Oxford Ouds as we look ahead
Aromas, (like images and sounds) create memories that invoke emotions helping us evolve by recognising danger or protection.
Welcome to our new blog series where we will be sharing with you all things related to the world of fragrance.
From the trends and seasonal changes that inspire us to the latest fragrances that we create with you in mind, our goal is to share our journey as we refine our craft in blending evocative fragrances here in Oxford.. the famous city of spires situated here in the UK.
And that skyline of the famous college spires went on to to inform and inspire our recent website refresh.
Another question we had to ask ourselves was ‘how do you capture the emotion and evocative nature of a perfume in the Visual medium such as the website?’
A chance encounter with marketing strategist Thomas Kilroy at kitchensync led to our collaboration on this redesign where he immersed himself in our brand and came up with some very compelling ideas which we have enjoyed exploring together.
It is said that a picture paints a thousand words, so one idea was to give some vibrancy to the site by pairing visual images to each perfume to invoke a feeling or an emotion, in the same way that an aroma does.
As a former chef, Thomas is acutely aware of how our sense of smell is imprinted in our brain from earliest development and intertwined with our memories in ways that have helped us to survive and evolve into modern-day human beings. From those earliest primordial environments that we originated from millions of years ago, it goes that our sense of smell was one of the first evolutionary senses to develop - initially as amphibians in water and later on land. As these aromas were experienced and ‘banked’, we relied on them to detect where food, or indeed danger, might be lurking. This ability to detect and anticipate danger from approaching predators helped us to thrive when other creatures perished.
Today, this same ability to closely associate aromas and scents with emotions and memories is still innate within us, so an image associated with an Oud, Fragrance or Eau de Parfum was a great way to create a website as visually stimulating as the perfumes are!
We hope you like it and encourage you to send us any feedback or suggestions you might have - it’s a work in progress, so your opinion really matters to us at Oxford Ouds
The university college skyline in Oxford that makes it world famous and known as the ‘city of spires’
