In some cases, color can determine the commercial success of an industrial product. Even in the case of customized enclosures, display frames, and membrane switch, we try to propose that combination of colors and finishes that can enhance to the maximum, taking cues from the most established trends in the world of design.
Do colors influence the way we relate to a particular product? It would seem so. For market experts, color has the power to emotionally push users towards acceptance of a certain product.
Behind this consideration we find a strong psychological component on the part of all of us, as we associate a specific color with a specific feeling and emotion.
For example, as we known that smartphone brands release new colors of a product months after its initial launch to attract new buyers, despite the technology remaining the same.
Obviously, color trends are formed over time and cause by many factors. Moreover, as German writer and psychologist Rudolf Arnheim points out, color takes on its completeness only when it occupies a place and function within a structure, a design construction. That is when the interactions of the color it establishes with the other visual elements must be addressed: shape, position, amount of light.
Industrial design often refers to the acronym CMF, which stands for: colors, materials and finishes. In the context of a project, giving space for CMF analysis means to consider in part the emotional identity of a product, starting from the fact that sight and touch interact in synaesthetic way.
Trending colors
Lechler is a paint brand, our supplier, that periodically collaborates with industrial designers to identify trendy colors and select them for their collections.
We are talking about products for liquid coating processes, typically involving aluminium enclosures and/or display frames. However, choosing an effective color scheme affects other types of products as well.
Color is a constantly evolving language and the analysis of past products shows that significant chromatic changes are cyclically so evident, so it is possible to identify with a good approximation the general color trend of the coming years.
And this is what Lechler trying to do. Classics is the latest collection that this company has presented to companies, designers and architects.
After the Pastelli collection, which evoked the soft pastel tones of the 1950s with supermatt finishes, the Polineutri collection, which revised and colored metallics, and the Golden Shades, which warms metallics, fading into glam, Classics presents timeless colors that have characterized different eras and historical periods.
In a period of great uncertainty and transition, classic colors such as Blue, Red, White and Green provide certainty because they are part of our chromatic DNA and can interpret all languages. Classics colors are designed to never go out of fashion and extend the life cycle of an industrial product.
“In addition to the information that come from our suppliers,” explains Alessandro Vignaga, MCS administrator and sales manager, “we also follow other sources such as the Pantone Color Institute which has chosen ‘Very Peri’ as the color of the year 2022, a periwinkle blue shade with a vibrant red-purple undertone.
Or the experts of Coloro, of the WGSN group, world leaders in design trends, who have indicated the five colors that will be adopted by 2023: Digital Lavander (soothing and balancing purple), Astro Dust (attractive mid-tone red), Galactic Cobalt (intense shade of blue), Sage Leaf (calm and contemplative green) and finally Apricot Crush (warm and bright shade of orange)».
“Often the choice of color comes as an input from the customer, since the product must recall the company or brand colors, sometimes formalized in a manual of coordinated image. In these cases, we can take action by recommending and proposing only finishing items.
Currently, matt and super-matt finishes and slightly textured finishes are very trendy. For products with a more sophisticated character, such as membrane switches, we offer glossy-matt contrast.
However, I must admit that it is not always easy to find products or areas of application where you can experiment in choosing particular colors or finishes.”