Graphic Design lecturer Kate McLean is showing one of her smellscapes at National Library of Scotland.

The smellscape of our world is in constant flux as smells come and go, meandering amongst architectures, vehicles and nature, between people and their everyday routines, indexing rhythms, life and activity. The invisibility of smell, both as a physical entity and as a social construct in the prevailing sensory order has led scholars to call for further study in how the urban smellscape may be detected, recorded, stored and communicated. The Sensory Maps project http://sensorymaps.com uses design methodologies to render visible geo-located olfactory sense-data through creative mapping practices and one work; “Smells of Auld Reekie on a very breezy day in 2011” by Kate McLean is on display at National Library of Scotland’s You Are Here: A journey through maps exhibition in Edinburgh from now until April 2017.

You Are Here challenges what we know about maps, how they are made and how we understand them. It shows the skills of the map makers and the aesthetics and usefulness of maps.

See http://www.nls.uk/exhibitions/maps for further details.

Kate McLean is a sensory designer, cartographer, photographer and smell collector. Educated in the UK and USA she has a BA (Hons) in Related Arts from the University of Chichester and a diploma in Graphic Design from NESADSU in Boston, USA. Her MFA (with distinction) is from Edinburgh College of Art. As Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design she specialises in typography and information design.