in memory of emails, design museum and mailchimp honor how they look, sound and smell

the design museum in london and intuit mailchimp’s wink spotlight the shifting culture of emails in an exhibition, from its early stages in the 1970s down to what it can look like in 2070.

matthew burgos October 3, 2023 4 min

Email is dead exhibition at the design museum in london

The Design Museum in London and Intuit Mailchimp’s in-house creative agency, Wink, collaborate to resurrect the look, feel, sound, and smell of emails in the digital age. The exhibition ‘Email is Dead’ ushers visitors into the obsolescence of the decades-old form of communication, which has dwindled down with the advent of DMs and instant messaging apps. The exhibition peers at the way emails have impacted people’s way of communication and how they have shaped corporate lives, personal relationships, collective cultures, and even global economics.

The immersive exhibition at The Design Museum in London runs from September 28th to October 22nd, 2023. The museum and Intuit Mailchimp’s Wink revive the overall legacy of emails in an immersive way: visitors can smell, feel, gaze at, and listen to the digital envelopes and letters inside the vibrant-colored spaces. Each room tells a story about emails, from their history to their progress, all accompanied by nuances of sounds, odors, and even cushiony seats that hark back to the email culture, such as the ‘at’ sign.

handcrafted perfume that depicts email culture

The ‘Email is Dead’ exhibition at the Design Museum, in collaboration with Intuit Mailchimp’s Wink, begins with the embryonic stage of emails in the 1970s and ends up exploring what the email experience might look like in 2070. Soundtracks aiming to depict the backstories of email are present. Guests can occasionally hear all the sounds and steps it takes to send an email, such as a swoosh, pop, ding, type, click, and send, as they roam around the exhibition.

The exhibition space is infused with an ‘Eau du Email’ scent developed in collaboration with Something Special Studios and Tatiana Godoy Betancur to evoke the smell of emails. The odor is crafted from aromatic plants like bergamot, geranium, sage, lavender, and sandalwood. Scents may have the power to transform mood and mindset, and this ties in with emails as these digital letters foster a sense of connection.

immersive exhibition with intuit mailchimp’s wink

Wink, Intuit Mailchimp’s in-house creative team, shepherds the exhibition identity with a bright yellow pixel pattern, email iconography in 3D sculptural lens, and a typeface inspired by the first email ever sent in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson (the staging does not fully depict the internet but hones in on its focus on email and its nature). Colorful and interactive displays encourage visitors to explore email’s impact through activities like burying their own ‘email time capsule’ or being prompted to take an email personality test to discover what kind of emailer they really are.

‘Now feels like the optimal time to tell this story because there’s been chatter about the death of email for over a decade. And every time there’s a new ‘thing’ like SMS or social media, experts speculate on its extinction. And now with the rapid expansion of AI, we found the chatter about the death of email to be even more relevant,’ explains Intuit Mailchimp’s CMO Michelle Taite, ‘In fact, with the help of AI, our inboxes are becoming increasingly personalized. In essence, email is becoming smarter than it’s ever been.’