Smells again

June 7, 2010 in Archives, technology, Trend | 4 comments

According to today’s The New York Times, the Magazine Publishers of America have never heard of a scratch n sniff cover before Sactown‘s latest offering.

Given that they have a vested interest in the story being big, they probably didn’t look too hard. To be fair, the precedents aren’t that easy to find, but they are there:

- Cult movie mag/zine Fright X (scroll down this link) had a scratch n sniff popcorn cover featuring John Walters

- The latest Mono.Kultur – see previous post – has a scratch n sniff cover, as well as insides.

- And, strangely, yesterday here in Bulgaria, someone introduced me to the scratch n sniff cover their magazine ran last year. The mag, Sign Cafe, is aimed at the international advertising market, and last year they carried a cover about a campaign called Mr Lime – it scratch and sniffed as lemon.

Bonus graphic design link: Scratch n sniff sticker designs from the 80s.

UPDATE: Newmanology points to this other example, from a little-known magazine called “Wired“. During its Viz phase, it seems.

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  3. James Kelleher’s avatar

    James Kelleher on June 9, 2010 at 6:00 am

    I’ve been told Jonathan Ive is now working on a front-facing Odor Pipe for the second iteration of the iPad, so they’re taking scratch and sniff pretty seriously.

    In order to stay ahead of the game, I’ve had to ramp up R&D on my edible magazine project, Om Nombre.

  4. Chris’s avatar

    Chris on June 17, 2010 at 9:16 pm

    Reporter (the student weekly of Rochester Institute of Technology) had a scratch and sniff cover for their food issue (http://reportermag.com/issue/food-issue) in May. It smelled like french fries, and made me want to throw up a little bit.