Sound and Vision: 3000 Years of Sensory Design
The ancient Greeks understood something fundamental when they built their amphitheaters on hillsides with natural acoustics and used the setting sun to create dramatic lighting effects: Experiences that engage multiple senses can create the most profound audience response.
While today’s experiential designers work with technologies that the Greeks never could have imagined, we still draw from the same playbook that captivated audiences millennia ago. Lighting, sound, contrast, even food and aroma, it’s all part of the contemporary designer’s bag of tricks. Although the rules of the game may have changed, the senses people use to play haven’t.
Whether we’re working with concert venues, museum exhibits, brand activations, or immersive attractions, we’ve found that the most innovative design comes from a thoughtful combination of cutting-edge tools and an understanding that the most successful experiences use the five senses in concert to elicit a transformative effect on the audience.
Today, we’ll explore six innovative takes on time-tested methods that, when skillfully deployed, leave lasting impressions on audiences and elevate experiences to the next level.
1. The art of the reveal
In experience design, less is (sometimes) more. The greatest impact often comes from strategically withholding elements rather than revealing everything at once. Controlling the audience’s attention with reveals helps designers build tension and create a sense of anticipation, making each discovery feel truly rewarding.
One of the most effective ways to do a reveal? Dropping the senses. We can lower the volume, dim the lights, or minimize visuals to reset the audience’s perceptual baseline and make the subsequent reveal much louder, brighter, and more powerful.
Another technique? Controlled chaos. By deliberately creating disorienting moments with a lot happening at the same time, we can then dramatically pivot to a single focal point, a powerful contrast that makes audiences sit up straight. Like magicians using misdirection, experiential designers can use sensory chaos to guide attention exactly where they want it.
There’s also the transition from solitary to collective experience, from personal exploration into a shared moment. We used this technique for the Assyrian Gallery at the British Museum, where visitors examined different artifacts at their own pace before being led by subtle sound cues into a fully synchronized projection mapping experience.
At Battersea Power Station, the Lift 109 Experience leverages dramatic contrast by taking visitors from the confined space of a chimney lift to a breathtaking 360° view of London’s skyline. Ascending the chimney in near-darkness, surrounded by neon lights that gradually intensify as the lift speeds up, you’re briefly disoriented before suddenly emerging onto the astonishing panoramic views of the city.
As these projects vividly illustrate, the most powerful experiences aren’t relentless – they’re rhythmic. By controlling when and how elements are revealed, we create experiences that resonate more deeply and are remembered long after they end.
2. Light up the room. Literally.
From 19th-century limelights to today’s advanced LED systems, lighting has always been a powerful tool for creating atmosphere, directing attention, and transforming space.
Take the “blinder” technique: a brief, intense burst of light that causes the pupils to contract rapidly, making dark scenes appear even darker afterward. Victorian concert halls like Alexandra Palace used this technique to mask scene changes; today, we employ it strategically in transitional spaces to create a sensory reset and heighten the impact of the destination. We can also do the reverse and darken environments gradually, allowing the pupils to dilate before shocking them with bright, vibrant colors.
London’s Lightroom experience is a perfect example. Their immersive shows begin with you navigating a long, dimly lit walkway that allows the pupils to fully dilate. When you finally enter the main space, your eyes are primed to experience its colors at maximum intensity.
There’s also temporal manipulation: using slow, oscillating pulses of light to sync the audience to a certain rhythm. This technique can create experiences that feel meditative or ritualistic, changing the way viewers perceive time. It’s used to great effect by artist Ivana Franke’s “Seeing with Eyes Closed” light installation, which employs stroboscopic lights to create vivid visuals behind closed eyes.
And that’s just the start. Recently, lighting has gone beyond its supporting role and become the main attraction. Artists like United Visual Artists and Olafur Eliasson have pioneered installations where light is the primary medium, creating compelling landscapes without obvious narrative content. Unlike screen-based media, these installations create an all-encompassing atmosphere that visitors don’t just observe but physically inhabit.
3. When sound surrounds the story
Like lighting techniques, sound design is a great way to create memorable moments that resonate long after an experience ends. We all know how a crescendo can elevate emotions to a peak, or how two ominous notes (a la Jaws) can instill visceral fear.
One powerful but often overlooked technique is sound masking, the art of removing noise. Sound masking blocks noise pollution from both street traffic and neighboring galleries in an exhibit, providing a clean auditory slate so visitors can fully immerse themselves in an experience.
Another technique is using specific sound frequencies to establish the emotional tone of an experience, whether it’s a feeling of groundedness from a low vibration or lightness from a higher pitch. When combined with culturally resonant instruments, think of the warmth of a violin or the distinctive timbre of an oud, these frequencies become even stronger emotional triggers.
One cutting-edge tool, HOLOPLOT, can pinpoint sound to specific areas using a mesh of speakers. This technology (featured in both the Las Vegas Sphere and Lightroom) allows designers to create distinct auditory zones within a single physical space.
Similarly, the touring exhibit David Bowie Is used tools like proximity-triggered audio to deliver tailored sound activated by visitor movement. The result is a personalized soundscape that embodies all the best qualities of sound design: an invisible sonic architecture guiding visitors through physical and emotional experiences.
4. For our next act, we’ll need a volunteer
Traditional experiences often position visitors as observers, creating a clear divide between those who create, the designers, and those who consume. Today’s immersive experiences are challenging this tradition, casting visitors as integral characters within experiential stories.
Sometimes it’s as simple as giving audiences a clear role and choices in how they navigate a space. Other times it’s by incorporating gamification elements, with visitors receiving interactive props, solving puzzles, or unlocking new areas.
London’s viral You Me Bum Bum Train project shows this approach at its most extreme and exclusive. Participants are sworn to secrecy, but each one is placed in a series of unexpected scenes and required to react authentically as the central character. Visitors describe it as life-changing.
Punchdrunk’s immersive theater productions similarly blur the line between audience and performance. In productions like “Sleep No More,” visitors don masks and explore a multi-floor environment at their own pace, discovering hidden scenes and being pulled into one-on-one interactions with performers.
Even massive commercial properties have embraced the approach: The Star Wars Rise of the Resistance ride at Disney World, for instance, drops you into the middle of a battle in the Star Wars universe, complete with Stormtroopers who march you through the Death Star before the resistance saves you.
These examples all play on our collective love of adventure. By transforming visitors from observers into active protagonists, designers can create experiences that resonate more deeply than even the most spectacular show viewed passively from a distance.
5. A dish best served… branded?
Sound and vision often dominate experience design, but we can’t forget about food and drink. Using edible elements in multisensory engagement has deep historical roots, from Renaissance sugar sculptures to the illusion cakes featured on the 2022 Netflix show “Is It Cake?”
Today, IP-driven food offerings like the infamous Dune popcorn bucket demonstrate how even simple concessions can extend a narrative experience and create shareable moments. The rise of eatertainment takes it a step further with restaurants like London’s Murdér Express, an immersive dining experience that puts audiences in a 1920s Agathe Christie murder mystery with a curated menu and a list of secrets they must uncover.
Even museums are getting in on the action, with the Louvre’s olfactory tours guiding visitors through carefully reconstructed historical fragrances and Museum Ulm’s “Follow Your Nose” tour using scent to provide additional context for artifacts.
Done poorly, this kind of experience can be a gimmick. But done well? Food and scent can engage sensory pathways that create deeper, more emotionally resonant memories, reminding us that our understanding of history and culture is tied to more than just the visible.
6. The venue tells the story
The physical space where an experience unfolds is rarely neutral. From the moment visitors approach a venue, its architecture begins telling a story.
Good experience design recognizes this, whether it’s the ornate decoration and strict seating arrangements of baroque opera houses or the deliberately grungy aesthetic of punk clubs and dive bars. The architecture itself sets expectations, communicates values, and creates an atmosphere.
From the LED main curtain at the Dallas City Performance Hall to the enormous projection surfaces of the New World Symphony Center in Miami Beach, today’s technology is turning architectural elements into dynamic surfaces that can set the mood before the show even begins. The Las Vegas Sphere is the most dramatic example, with its fully programmable interior and exterior walls allowing for total transformation of the venue.
Ultimately, the most memorable experiences don’t fight against or ignore their architectural context. They use it to craft journeys that begin the moment visitors spot the building.
Encore: The Enduring Impact of Multi-Sensory Design
While the tools and technologies we use continue to evolve, the human senses they target remain unchanged. The same psychological and physiological responses that moved audiences in ancient amphitheaters still operate when today’s audiences enjoy installations with advanced projection mapping or spatial audio design.
The most innovative brands today understand that immersive storytelling isn’t confined to a single medium. It’s about building entire ecosystems of multisensory experience with multiple points of entry, like Meow Wolf’s interactive art environments, Disney’s theme parks, and even the upcoming TV show-based attractions at Netflix House.
As experience design continues to evolve, the most successful projects will be those that engage the senses with a combination of traditional sensory approaches and modern tools. The technologies will continue to change, but the human desire for transformative experiences remains constant. We’re still hungry for wonder, surprise, and meaningful connection, and the techniques that deliver these experiences have maintained their power over centuries.
