How do you ignite visceral reactions to the five senses using only a printed medium? In 2018 New York’s Cooper Hewitt Design Museum hosted the design exhibition “The Senses: Design Beyond Vision”. The exhibition celebrated our varied ways of exploring the world and experiencing joy and wonder, extending the sensory richness of our world. The exhibition featured a collection of 98 sensory design objects that use multiple senses to provoke the viewer, reflecting experimentation with new materials and technologies to harness the power of the senses and heighten design’s impact and reach. This poster series, part of an ongoing internal creative engagement initiative — Studio Out of Office (SOOO) — was created to promote an agency visit to the exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt. The poster series was conceived to bring the abstract phenomenon of sensory perception to life in arresting ways, defying the confines of a 2D printed medium.

The poster series features intricately complex 3D renderings forming surreal typographic compositions. Each of the five senses is crafted out of real-world objects and anatomical body parts to feature unique aspects of each sense, showcasing it in a fun, ironic, self-referential way. The hyperreal, densely layered visual approach results in whimsical, uncanny, and perhaps uncomfortable takes on what it means to perceive. A closer examination is rewarded with the discovery of hidden details and surprise Easter eggs.