Kickstart: An AI vision of the future

How colorful will the world be in 2024? Avient Corp. has some ideas, and for its ColorForward color forecast this year it turned to artificial intelligence — or AI — to show off those colors.

AI has been appearing in social media posts as users ask image generators to use either a few words or a simple photo to render a computer image of a person or a concept. For Avon Lake, Ohio-based Avient, AI translates the color of fresh tomatoes into the exterior fascia of plant-monitoring drones. For colors sorted under the phrase "Anything Else?" orange and yellow goldfish circle a city in the sky.

"Recent years' challenges have forced us to change our behavior and discover the power of sharing and building communities," Avient writes in a news release on its latest ColorForward. "This switch from paying attention to bad news to acting and making positive changes happen can be seen in a palette dominated by translucent colors."

You can see all four AI concepts on color forecasting on Avient's Twitter stream and read about them at Avient's website.

A Florida man is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to a fraud case that sought to set himself up as a different kind of a middle man in materials sales.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Ohio says Terrance Anderson, 66, of Parkland — the owner of Coral Polymers — pleaded guilty in a case accusing him of pretending to work for major polymer suppliers to arrange for material deliveries to logistics companies.

"Anderson never intended to pay for the polymers but rather sought to resell them to third-party buyers," the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a news release. "… After ordering the polymers, Anderson arranged for victim logistics companies to unload the railcars, store the substances, repackage and load them for shipment to their final destination."

The fraud involved about $4 million in purchases between July 2013 and January 2020.

You can read more about the case here.

Consumer products maker S.C. Johnson & Son Inc. and Steelcase Inc. are not strangers to recycling. S.C. Johnson, with in-house blow molding for bottles, has used material from 1 billion bottles collected through the Plastic Bank initiative for Windex bottles. Steelcase, an office furniture maker, uses chemically recycled nylon 6 from BASF for the Flex Perch Stool.

Now Steelcase is recreating office furniture originally created by design icon Frank Lloyd Wright for S.C. Johnson's corporate headquarters in Racine, Wis.

The S.C. Johnson headquarters opened in 1939 and is considered one of the most iconic buildings in architecture, with soaring concrete columns supporting its roof. Wright also designed more than 40 pieces of furniture for the office.

Working with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Steelcase will bring back the oval-shaped desks with their curved drawers, art deco-style chairs and utility tables. The company hasn't said what materials will go into the Frank Lloyd Wright Racine Collection but expect to pay a premium for them. Small desks and chairs begin at more than $2,500, with a price tag of more than $9,000 on an executive desk.