Liam Findlay

So, the first thing I wanted to ask you was, how did you first get into developing smells and scents? 
I actually did an animation degree, and I worked in the animation industry for a while and then I ended up working at an escape room. So, some of my animation skills kind of adapted into that through design and storytelling and making things. And then I ended up designing things for other attractions like castles and other escape rooms and events. And I knew that AromaPrime existed because they were founded in the 1960s. So, for many years, they’ve been providing smells for attractions and I contacted them. And I was just thinking that perhaps with my background in attraction design, I could kind of advise the customers with an understanding of the processes that they go through. And AromaPrime found that handy and they took me on and that was in about 2018. And I’ve been with them since, so. But my main specialism is advising people on how to use scents.

And the smells that you tend to develop, do they tend to be bad smells, or do you sometimes have to make nice smells as well? 
I suppose ours are kind of neutral to unpleasant most of the time. Because we work with lots of museums and theme parks, it will be things that you might experience in reality, and day-to-day reality, or even unusual scenarios like battles and being in a submarine. So, it’ll be smells like oil and smoke and dinosaurs. 

And I suppose sometimes things that you’ve never smelled before, I guess, right? 
Yeah, and that’s a common challenge, like with dinosaurs. With lots of museums we’ll maybe recreate smells that have gone extinct so we might be given fossil evidence that suggests things about diets, like the diet of a creature or like the T. rex would have meat stuck between its teeth so it would have had stinky breath. So, you can use lots of historical clues to guide you in making right decisions when you’re recreating some.