Clariant is aiming to help plastics processors get ahead with its ColorForward 2017 color forecasting guide.
The 11th annual version of the color design tool was released Jan. 12 by Muttenz, Switzerland-based Clariant, which ranks as one of the world's largest makers of color concentrates.
“ColorForward 2017 is very different from the 2016 edition we released a year ago,” Clariant ColorWorks designer Judith van Vliet said in a news release.
“We believe the mood is becoming a bit more fearful, more introspective and reflecting the disconnectedness that many people seem to be feeling today,” she added. “There are some exceptions of course, but in general the colors are more muted, softer, darker and even ambiguous.”
The trend themes — each with five colors — identified in ColorForward 2017 are:
• ANNOY FIRM OMIT, which is an anagram of the phrase “my information.” It's intended to capture the ambiguous, yin/yang nature of the information universe. Data mining “is central to this trend theme,” officials said. Two of the five colors are “dark and sinister.”
• DELONELINATION, which symbolizes that “in a connected world, the last taboo is being lonely.” The five colors representing this trend are generally pale and muted, ranging from a beige to suggest “the human need to be handled with care,” to a plain brown.
• NEBULOVE, which “could almost be seen as the antithesis of loneliness because it recognizes a trend toward complex connected relationships between multiple people.” These people “may be married or not depending on what gives them fulfillment.” Colors representing this theme are a light green/yellow like the inside of a cucumber, and a diffuse red. There's also a lilac purple and a brownish orange, almost cognac-colored shade. A deep soft pink color called Perky Star is used to represent the “happy single.”
• IT'S A TRAP! Demonstrates that “life can be a trap — it can be hard and stressful — or just plain dull — if you allow it to become that way.” As a result, “people are beginning to seek new ways to break out, to be curious and explore the limits of the human mind.” The colors of this trend theme tend toward “a funky new aesthetic.”
