MULTISENSORY Experience • CuLtural Futures • Sensory Composition • Scent & Sensory Branding
Strategy • Concept • Design
Brand • Media • Culture • Space
I am Carolin Vedder.
I design how senses interact.
My work connects art, design, perception, and futures research across media and cultural contexts.
I translate patterns from cultural history, technology and natural cylces into emerging markets, political climates, design trajectories, and cultural shifts.
What first drew me into design was the desire to make beautiful things. Illustration, static design and photography were the starting point. Working with still images taught me how composition, contrast and detail anchor perception.
But how do people actually perceive what we create, and why do certain configurations feel pleasing or meaningful?
In 1999 at MTV Networks in New York my focus shifted from static composition to temporal logic. Since then I have created channel identities, film titles, exhibitions and immersive formats for MTV, Nickelodeon, ORF, ZDF, VIVA, Pro7, Mercedes, BMW, Audi, VW, Siemens, Douglas and CERN.
Motion Design showed me that people do not perceive visuals in isolation. They perceive color, shape, sound, voice, effects, transitions, tensions, delays and resolutions. Meaning forms through sequence and we experience narrative over time.
Around 2013, while working with olfactory materials, I recognised that I “smell” color, a form of synesthesia. If the brain can translate color into scent, then crossmodal translation follows rules that can be examined, mapped and applied. I studied how information moves between senses how separate sensory streams combine into one interpretation.
The Bauhaus Missing Scents project (2019) emerged from this idea. Treating scent as a missing parameter within Bauhaus Gestalt principles demonstrated that full crossmodal translation is possible and exposed the absence of a structural map for how modalities relate, influence and transform beyond shape and color and material. In this project I mapped color and shape to scent, music, and behaviour for the first time.
Multimodal thinking was almost absent in design. It needed frameworks, systems and logics that could guide practice and the future of design. Design needs Nervenkitzel.
That's when I started to develop The Sensory Code: sensory modalities as a digitized information state to compose, translate, modulate and design across all modailites.
In 2025 I published my first on-going research on non-molecular scent transmission, exploring whether perceptual states could encode digital smell without relying on chemistry as well as a proposed digital standard for encoding and transmitting scent as digital information. OLPX.
The work moved from understanding the structural properties of how we perceive to composing new perceptual experiences, for brands, films, institutions, and immersive environments.
Visual Design establishes the spatial-semantic field.
Motion supplies the temporal grammar.
Scent exposes the associative architecture.
Neuroscience defines the physiological boundaries.
Sensory Composition defines sensory roles and arranges them into composed experiential sequences.
Futures Foresight identifies the socio-technical, cultural, and environmental trajectories.
Cultural Pattern Analysis creates interconnections across domains of existing, historical, and emerging patterns.
Background
• 30 years in Graphic Design
• 27 years in Motion Design
• 15 years in Olfactory Arts and Experiential Design
• Marketing & Advertising: School of Visual Arts, New York
• Design & Photography: Merz Akademie, Stuttgart
• Design & Art History, Diploma: Frankfurter Akademie für Kommunikation und Design
• Fundamentals of Neuroscience, Certified: Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences Online
• Neuroscience and Cognitive Studies: MIT OCW
• Futures Thinking, Strategies & Frameworks, Certified: University of Cambridge ICE
Selected Collaborations, Clients and Partners
MTV Networks, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, ORF, ZDF, VIVA, Pro7Sat1, ARD, TUM x CERN, Siemens, Douglas x Peter Lindbergh, Paris Autosalon, European Film Awards, SEAT, AUDI, Mercedes, VW, BMW, Ipsen, ARAG, Linde, Wacom, Ferrero, UBS, Dr.Best, Universal Music, Sony Music, Prime, BMEIA, Ö1, Mythos Mozart, Registan Festival Samarkand
Selected Recognition
Awards for the Mercedes A-Klasse "Eine gute Idee" design project: Communication Arts Annual, One Show Interactive, Red Dot, ITVA, Ottocar, Grand Award, NY Festival, DDC, Epica, HOW Interactive Design, HOW IA Annual, IAAA, iF Design, D&AD Annual, D&AD Award, Cresta, ID Magazine
For more information, showreel, and work examples, please visit https://design-in-motion.com
For questions, collaborations feel free to reach out:
Thank you!