A recent New Yorker article explores the concept of multisensory design—and how taste can be altered by color, shape, or sound alone. Designers, of all people, know that a soda can is not just a soda can. It's an opportunity for savvy companies to show why the soda is special, a chance for consumers to engage with the product and, if done right, a powerful marketing tool that can make a brand instantly recognizable the world over. But can the way a food item is packaged affect the way that it tastes? Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University, thinks it can—or at least how we perceive the taste. For a recent article in the New Yorker , writer Nicola Twilley visits him in his Crossmodal Research Lab, where he and a team of researchers are testing how taste can be altered through color, shape, or sound. Their research suggests that the whoosh -ing sound of a can opening may make a drink seem fizzier, for example, or that the yellow hue of 7