Clariant International Ltd. is marking a decade of color forecasting with the 10th edition of its ColorForward program.
Colors introduced by the new line will be used by Clariant's Masterbatches business unit, which is one of the world's largest makers of color and additive concentrates.
ColorForward “aims to help plastic product designers and marketing professionals make more informed color choizes,” officials with Muttenz, Switzerland-based Clariant said in a Jan. 15 news release.
“Each edition presents four global societal trends that can be expected to influence consumers' behavior,” they added. “The international team of Clariant specialists then selects different colors or color combinations that evoke an emotional response related to each trend.”
Themes identified in ColorForward 2016 are:
• Liquid Minds — Colors that show that “nostalgia is over” and that “bureaucratic overanalysis does nothing but stifle fresh thinking.”
• Oh My Go(l)d! — Shades that suggest that “super-rich millennials, jaded by possessions, are moving from owning to experiencing a luxury.”
• Love — This color family states that “technology and human existence have become one “and that “for many, technology and its ways of connecting to us are perceived as a vital organ we can't live without.”
• Work It Girl — A group of colors for “a new generation of women,” one that “is more chillaxed and is comfortable with her own natural self, [and] hence has nothing to prove to the world.”
“Through my involvement with ColorForward, I have really come to appreciate how color moves people, informs their view of the world around them and can even influence their purchasing decisions,” Clariant Masterbatches head of marketing Matthias Brommer said in the release.
In the first nine months of 2014, Clariant's overall corporate sales essentially were flat at $5.2 billion vs. the same period in 2013. But in that same comparison the firm swung from a loss of almost $86 million to a profit of about $97 million.
Sales in Clariant's Plastics & Coatings business — including Masterbatches, pigments and additives — also essentially were flat for the nine months at $2.25 billion. The unit's pretax profit, however, improved about 7 percent to $250 million.