From scent to sight: designer Caleb Vanden Boom creates a heady brand world for Clue Perfumery

With Clue Perfumery, perfumer Laura Oberwetter wanted to do something different. Launching with a range of three debut scents, the independent perfumery’s take on its craft is far removed from the traditional avenues of perfume-making, overwhelmingly siloed in French institutions. Through a long iterative process, Oberwetter arrived at the three scents – Morel Map, Warm Bulb, and With the Candlestick – and then began imagining what Clue Perfumery’s brand world might look like, along with her childhood friend designer Caleb Vanden Boom, who also co-founded the perfume house.

Together, the duo created a brand that’s just as evocative as the scents themselves. The identity leads with an expressive wordmark, hand-drawn from scratch. “It is inspired by several classic typefaces that have similar characteristics like Motter Regatta, Bronstein, and Charade. We liked the thick contrast of these scripts and their bell-bottom lower curves,” Vanden Boom, Co-founder & Designer, tells us. “We wanted to capture a similar spirit but with a modern slant. We decided to standardise the curves in a geometric repetitive quality, and also employ blocky ink traps, a characteristic of a lot of great modern typefaces like ABC Whyte.”

Drenched in personality, the wordmark is supported by ABC Diatype, which “sits nicely alongside our more expressive display typeface, Signifier, and acts as a neutral workhorse in our system that doesn’t distract from other design elements,” he adds. And this was important. The visual quietude of the secondary typefaces make space for the other stars of the show – a custom symbol for each of the scents, crafted by celebrated artists and designers Bráulio Amado, Sophy Hollington, and Gustavo Eandi. “Bráulio, Sophy, and Gustavo are all heroes of mine; I have loved and admired their work for years,” Vanden Bloom tells us. “I feel very lucky they wanted to work on this project with us! Our goal with the symbols was to create a small visual representation of the concept of the scent.”

Each of the symbols delivers on this promise of capturing the essence of each perfume – for Morel Map, which evokes a foraging adventure in the springtime woods searching for morel mushrooms, Amado created a fitting symbol “with a slight psychedelic edge.” The Candlestick is reminiscent of the ritual tradition of taking communion, and Hollington’s linocut illustration subtly captures this note through the image of a flaming, melting candle. “Warm Bulb depicts a warm scene of reading at night, under a dusty old lightbulb,” says Vanden Boom. “Gustavo’s work is full of evocative powerful symbols. We knew he would be able to perfectly capture the various elements of this scene (reading, lightbulb, warmth) in a singular potent graphic.”

Along with the vintage-tinted treatment of the art direction, the symbols add to the charm of Clue Perfumery – a space where nothing is quite spelt out, and yet everything inspires a reaction, a memory. “A lot of people’s experiences with fragrances trigger really powerful memories of the past. They may be a little hazy, washed out, and dream-like, but evocative and visual nonetheless,” adds Vanden Bloom. “We wanted to capture that feeling in the artworks we created to help tell the stories of the scents.”

Caleb Vanden Boom

Clue Perfumery