Sincerely, Ky
Perfume workshop materials
Date
November 2025
Type
Advertising and Marketing Designer for Ky's Kandles
Print design
Visual design
Overview
Ky's Kandles is a luxury candle shop owned and operated by Kyla Smith. She offers hands-on workshops where people can create candles with fragrances they curate themselves. Kyla's love for fragrances also spurred the creation of her own perfume collection, Sincerely, Ky. To push her business further, Kyla used her expertise to introduce a new type of service—perfume workshops. In January 2026, Ky's Kandles officially began workshops that guided customers in curating their signature scents, and I had the privilege of helping it come to life.
My Role
I designed an informational booklet to supplement the guided perfume workshops. This booklet was to act as a reference guide that included important workshop steps and facts on fragrances. Kyla educates her customers about how fragrances work, so I designed the booklet to visualize that.
Additionally, I designed a take-home card that lets customers write down their finalized scent combo on the front and document their fragrance selection process on the back.
The Booklet
About the Process
The Form
From the start of the project, I knew what content needed to be present in the booklet, it just needed the right form. How customers interact with the booklet was a top priority, so I began researching folding methods. Since Kyla specified she did not want a typical z-fold brochure structure, my creative direction became clearer—the booklet needed a distinct cover. The familiarity of opening a book cover and reading left to right is what we needed to ensure customers knew how to approach the booklet.
The booklet was to be composed of four main parts: a brief rundown of workshop steps, fragrance menu, fragrance wheel, and a breakdown of perfume concentrations. When I came across the closed gate fold brochure structure with its four distinct inside pages, it made total sense!
The Content
The flow of the inside pages was fairly straightforward. Workshop steps went on the inside left flap to be read first. The fragrance menu and wheel, which were going to be referred to the most throughout the workshop, went on the two center pages. Finally, the perfume concentrations come last since customers choose their concentration after picking their scents. The order of information reflects the order of the workshop, which makes for a more intuitive experience.
A critical design decision I made was visually connecting the top, middle, and base notes with their corresponding scent duration and volatility. I extended the pyramid over the fold line to interrupt the structure of separate pages, therefore drawing customers' attention to the menu.
The Take-Home Card
As part of the personalized perfume-crafting experience, Kyla wanted something customers could take home, besides their fragrance of course! This take-home card is way for customers to take ownership of their unique creation and eventually become a pocket memento.
Initially, the back of the card was blank, but after her first few workshops, Kyla found that her customers needed a place to jot down notes. With the addition of a notes section where customers can write down fragrances they'd like to experiment with, this card documents an exciting journey of discovery through smell.
Reflection
From starting at Ky's Kandles in July 2025 to designing material that marked a pivotal moment in the business a few months later was such a rewarding experience. Seeing Kyla's excited reaction to having custom workshop materials printed to launch her new service was priceless. This was my first professional print design project, so it marked a big step in my career path as well.
I view this project as demonstrating UX practices through a non-digital medium. There may be no complex system of interactions to consider, but how customers experience this booklet is no less important. I focused on the principles of how humans interact with printed material just as much as typography and other visual design elements.