The Color Forward Process

Clariant Masterbatches describes how it forecasts consumer color tendencies.

In the final weeks of 2008, a team of color, design and marketing experts from Clariant ColorWorks design and technology centers prepared to predict the future. Their objective—to answer the question: “What colors will resonate with consumers in 2010?”

Their predictions would form the basis for the newest edition of ColorForward, the Clariant Masterbatches color trend analysis and design tool released annually to help designers and marketing professionals make informed decisions about the colors that will be used in plastics products and packaging more than a year from now.

To reach their conclusions, the team had been working for months, reviewing notes taken at international design conferences, and poring over newspapers, fashion publications and social-sciences journals.They mapped color-match data in three dimensions and compared it to what regional color-trending organizations were reporting. At the same time, they gathered hundreds of samples of fabric, paper and other materials, magazine articles and photos. They consulted with trend experts in allied fields like textiles, perfumes and furniture. And they had the added benefit of working every day with the world’s leading OEMs and brand companies.

Theirs is an ambiguous task, made all the more complicated by the fact that the team needs to consider the nuances of politics, economics and culture that make each world region distinct and unique, and then isolate those trends and tendencies that are truly global. Still, having prepared three previous editions for 2007, 2008 and 2009, the ColorWorks professionals have a solid record of success and objective evidence that their predictions are on target.

“People tend to respond well to colors that reflect the broader influences on their lives,” explains designer Cristina Carrara, who works in the ColorWorks center located in Merate, near Milan, Italy. “Since brand managers are working now on products and packaging that will be on the market in 2010 and beyond, we need to help them anticipate which colors will be most effective in gaining consumer attention a year or more from now.”

ColorForward evolves from several directions. First, team members from the seven ColorWorks centers around the world survey color activity in their regions and key market segments. Working for Clariant Masterbatches, they have an advantage. The company has a local presence in 33 different countries and serves customers on six continents, which provides a truly global perspective on color. These customers include, essentially, all of the major brand-marketing companies in the world.

The tens of thousands of color matches that Clariant Masterbatches completes for customers every year form a huge historical database. It documents the choices that product marketers have actually made and provides a context in which the ColorForward predictions can be evaluated.

Color communications specialist, Norzihan Aziz, who manages the ColorWorks center in Singapore, has plotted more than 10,000 color matches completed over the last two years for packaging industry customers. In a three-dimensional “colorspace” (see photo), individual colors appear as dots, making it easy to see clusters in areas of the spectrum and to see how preferences shift from one year to the next. To make it easier to analyze, the colorspace can be divided into 90-degree sections (see photo).

Once the colorspace was established, Aziz superimposed dots representing the colors included in earlier editions of ColorForward, along with predictions published by color-trend analysts in North America, Europe and Asia. Looking at this array, Aziz and her colleagues can identify two important things: where in the spectrum most of the colors are clustered, and which “breakout” colors are outside the norm. The clusters represent a convergence of preferences from all the major regional markets in the world, while the breakout colors burst on the scene without warning.They have not evolved from those that were popular in the years before but, instead, may signal the birth of a totally new trend growing out of major global events. A good example of this phenomenon would be some of the reds and purples that were included in ColorForward 2008 in anticipation of the Beijing Olympic Games. Confirming this trend, many of the stars at the 2008 Academy Awards wore bright red.

Seeking Global Color Trends

Strategically positioned across the globe, the ColorForward team representatives are like international news correspondents, reporting back what they observe. They look at the kinds of colors that are being used in current projects, those finding their way into leading-edge markets like fashion, and still more that appear in youthful, trendy and artistic environments. They attend conferences and trade events in every end-use market, including packaging, housewares, fashion, furniture, interior design, automotive, jewelry, and textiles, to name just a few.

Global Repositioning shows a collage of images and colors representing one of the four cultural and lifestyle themes that the ColorForward team felt would influence color preferences in 2009.

Through these connections, they gain exposure to forecasts and opinions that extend way beyond any single industry and are able to begin making their own predictions about what global consumers will respond to in the coming years.

In the process, the team members look at societal trends and try to identify how these tendencies and preferences among consumers will influence the way they respond to color. The clearest example is expanding environmental consciousness, which tends to draw people toward greens and other natural, earthy tones.

Any one of these factors might draw attention to a particular color, and then other resources – like the historical colorspace Norzihan Aziz developed – are used to confirm the choice or fine-tune it. Eventually, ideas for themes and color samples from around the world are assembled for the entire team to review.

“ColorForward is a global forecast,” Carrara explains, “so our team looks for commonalities – ideas and hues that seem to fit any part of the world, regardless of regional circumstances.”

Can you have a truly global color? “Yes and no,” says Clariant’s Aziz. “It is not realistic to assume that people all over the world will adopt a particular red or green at the same time or in the same way. Instead, what they do is mix global colors with regional colors. Their regional palette is nuanced by the broader global trends.”

At the same time, international travel and communications encourage the blurring of distinct global identities, allowing an enlightened intermingling of ideas and ethnic influences without abandoning unique cultural roots.

ColorForward 2010

ColorSpace shows a more technical approach to color trends. When color data is plotted in a three-dimensional color space, trends become apparent.

The next edition of ColorForward looks at societal trends, and forecasts what colors are likely to appeal to consumers as the second decade of the 21st century dawns.

However, consumers do not change their minds abruptly, Cristina Carrara points out. They don’t stop responding to one shade in favor of another. Rather, color trends, like mass social trends, tend to evolve slowly over time and geography. “That’s why we don’t try to tell people what color to choose,” says Carrara. “We just want to provide information and inspiration that our customers can interpret and adapt to fit their own marketing objectives and product requirements.”

The diverse perspectives that team members bring to ColorForward help to ensure that current and future editions continue to offer valuable insight well beyond the twelve months for which they are issued. Representing both the artistic and the technical side of color, and acknowledging the similarities and differences between East and West, the Old World and the New World, this singular Clariant creative tool encourages designers and marketers to explore and discuss global possibilities, adapting these pathways within their own world of color.