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I love the smell of fresh ink on new paper, but most people I know prefer other scents, such as that wonderful new car smell.
I don't know anyone who doesn't like the scents of summer including a whiff of suntan lotion, freshly mown grass or even cotton candy on a warm summer's day. Provocative scents lure and powerful smells can repel, but they all grab your attention.
Imagine being able to take some of the most powerful and pleasant scents and use them in your designs. Well, you don't have to imagine because it's easier and less expensive than you'd expect to add scent to anything that is offset printed. All it takes is a little extra time, the right know-how and a cooperative printer.
The Methods and the Projects
One way to get scent on paper is to coat the entire sheet. That's the option that McCormick, the company that makes spices and flavorings for food and cooking, has chosen to add some extra "spice" to its annual reports. Every year the company incorporates a different spice, such as ginger or cinnamon, in the pages of the annual report.
To find out more about the project and the process of scenting paper in this way, I talked with Paul Schmitz at E. John Schmitz & Sons, Inc. (www.schmitzpress.com), a commercial printer located near Baltimore. The company has been owned and operated by the Schmitz family since its founding in 1937 and in 2002, won a Sappi North American Printer of the Year Gold Award.
Schmitz told me that adding scent to a sheet of paper is as simple as adding a coat of varnish. In fact, in the process they use on the McCormick annual report, the scent is applied to the paper inline (on press) in much the same way as a varnish is applied. The addition of the coating requires extra drying time, but basically, it's a simple process. Schmitz suggested, though, that it's not the kind of thing every printer would be comfortable doing because getting it right takes some experience.
I checked with Micro-Scent (www.microscent.com), a firm that mixes up the scented coating liquid for Schmitz and McCormick. Micro-Scent has more than 400 pre-mixed scents you can use, including chocolate, lawn, sea breeze -- and yes, suntan lotion. Micro-Scent will also mix up custom scents, which is what it does for the McCormick project.
Making a custom scent can take several weeks and requires an oil (not water) soluble fragrance, which Micro-Scent can help find or develop. The company doesn't usually charge extra for the development and testing process.
The paper stock used in the McCormick scented section of the annual report is a matte, which is what Micro-Scent recommends. The scent is microencapsulated, and the process works best with matte or dull coated or vellum papers as opposed to gloss coated stocks. The process tends to give the paper a matte appearance, so you need to choose a paper with that in mind.
If you don't need to coat the entire sheet or if you want to make sure the scent doesn't reveal itself as soon as the envelope is opened, then you can add a scratch-and-sniff or rub-and-sniff scent to the paper. Doing so allows you to place more than one scent on a single sheet of paper, as well.
The Possibility of Multiple Sniffs
To find out more about this process, I talked with Jim Berard, co-founder of a new company called Scentisphere (www.scentisphere.com). The company makes Rub'nSmell, a scented print varnish that also uses microencapsulated technology. The product can be applied inline just as any other spot varnish is applied and just about any quality paper can be used except newsprint.
The scent isn't detectible until the area where it has been applied is rubbed. Unlike older scratch and sniff processes, the scent can be activated many times because the process applies millions of microcapsules within a small area.
I asked Berard for the names of a few customers who are using the product. A week or so later, I chatted with Dana Springfield, director of circulation at Yankee Candle. He manages the company's retail and wholesale catalog production process, and he's been using Rub'nSmell for a few months now with great success.
The company's retail operation sends out eight to ten catalogs a year, ten million in all, and Springfield was looking for a way to let customers smell new candle fragrances. He's run several tests with the scented varnish and has been so impressed with the increased sales that he's using it to introduce six new scents in the latest catalog.
The biggest lesson he and his staff learned from the tests is that they needed to find a way to call attention to the coated areas that contain the scent. The printed sample I received from Berard has dotted lines around the areas with instructional text. For example, a dotted line appears around a jar candle with the text, "Rub the jar to experience Citrus Sunshine Fragrance!" printed directly above the jar.
Berard likes the fact that you can't smell the scent until you touch the area where it has been applied, which allows people to stop and sniff only the scents they think they'll like. He also likes the price -- compared to other scented printing processes he has tried, this one is the least expensive.
Fragrance Makes A Difference
The hardest part of the process may be finding a printer that has extensive experience in using scented products. However, if you talk to the scent suppliers in this article they will be able to direct you to a printer who is familiar with their products. So, if you have a project that could benefit from the added boost of an evocative fragrance, then you should investigate the difference scent can make.
Sabine Lenz is a graphic designer with more than 15 years of experience in Germany, Australia and the U.S. She writes frequently for several industry publications and is also a speaker on paper issues and educational topics related to the paper industry. For more tips and news on paper, and more specifically insights that will help you spec’ the perfect paper for your project every time, download my “5 Paper Myths Exposed” report at http://www.papertipsfordesigners.com/.
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