DAD Agency has eschewed the pared-back palette of traditional perfumeries in favour of kaleidoscopic colours and 3D graphics for its rebrand of independent fragrance start-up Sillages Paris.

The French perfume brand is based entirely online and matches customers with their fragrance based on a questionnaire about their favourite ingredients and scents.

"Because Sillages isn't a standard perfume brand, we had more freedom to create something for them that wasn't standard either," DAD Agency co-founder Leanne Bentley told Dezeen.

"A lot of perfume brands are so tied up with the idea of luxury that it feels like they've painted themselves into a corner when it comes to how they can express personality. Perhaps there's a fear that bright colours and bold visuals don't translate to this space."

Going against the grain, DAD Agency created a web design for the brand including photography, animations, illustrations and matching typography, which shouts rather than whispers.

Bold, contrasting colours are offset against collages showcasing Sillages Paris' arsenal of different, natural ingredients, in a visual representation of the mix-and-match process that users go through to pick their scent.

"We created a colour palette that had three tones: deep, pop and bright. We wanted to have a good balance of darker, richer colours with brighter, bolder ones as a way to bring the luxury and the playfulness together," said Ulla-Britt Vogt, DAD Agency's other half.

"It was really important to us that the photography of real people was still sensual, so we got close-up portraits that crop into the neck and focus on skin."

Superimposed on these images are 3D-rendered Sillages perfume bottles that spin and refract their surroundings like trippy, mirrored carousels.

As a "window into individual expression", this is designed to highlight how the bottle might look the same but its contents are always unique to the user.

Together with the accompanying visuals, which feature glitchy edits of the different ingredients, the animation also nods to Sillages' positioning as an extremely online brand.

"Sillages is a perfume brand built for the internet," said Bentley. "People can engage with the product in a really meaningful way online and the process of creating your perfume is a fun experience you can engage with anywhere. It felt appropriate for us to lean into this aesthetic."

Contrasted against this technology-driven style is a series of hand-drawn, two-dimensional illustrations, which explain the users' journey from sharing details about their favourite ingredients to being matched with a fragrance and receiving a tester sample.

Based between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, DAD agency has previously helped to develop an app that makes climate-friendly eating easy and accessible, as well as creating the branding for Dutch theatre company Iona&Rineke and record label Oossha.

While Sillages Paris exudes maximalism, MIT researchers Jiani Zeng and Honghao Deng recently developed a "truly minimalist" 3D printed perfume bottle, featuring an optical illusion that renders its branding almost entirely invisible.