In the consumer goods sector, from fashion to electronics and home appliances, colour matters – and predicting the next colour trend is big business.
“To sell something you have to first get someone’s attention. Colour helps to clarify a product's identity”, says Laurie Pressman, Vice President of the Pantone Color Institute, which provides colour consulting services for brands and products. The American firm is best known for its colour standards, which provide a unique identifying number for each shade. Companies use these to communicate precise shades to suppliers, and ensure they are reproduced consistently on any material. “Making sure the colours are easily achievable is critically important”, says Pressman.
While colour may not be top of mind for many people, it plays an important role in every industry. For manufacturers, a product’s colour – whether a mobile phone, blender, toothbrush or car – is tied closely to its brand identity and the message the manufacturer wants to convey to consumers. Successful consumer brands like Apple iPhones, KitchenAid mixers, Beats headphones and Kate Spade use carefully selected colours to stand out from competitors. Colours can even become iconic, trademarked assets. Take manufacturing firm 3M’s canary yellow and Tiffany’s eggshell blue.
Jane Monnington Boddy is Director of Colour for London-based WGSN, which provides clients with insights on trends in fashion, interior design and lifestyle. Charged with knowing what colours will be most in demand next year and beyond, her job takes her to fashion shows, art exhibits and other cultural displays around the world on an unending quest for clues.
“It takes a long time to become a colour that hits the masses and makes retailers a lot of money”, she says. At WGSN’s biannual “trend summit”, she meets with team members from around the world to compare notes. Currently her antennae are out for the hot colours of spring/summer 2019, which will be announced in June 2017. Colour trends must be spotted well in advance, the BBC explains, to give apparel and product manufacturers time to prepare their production lines.
Pressman notes that the popularity of certain colours can reflect cultural and social forces at work. She draws an association between lighter colours coming into fashion with the growth of the sharing economy. “Sharing means lightness, you don’t want to be bogged down so you’re not looking at a heavy palette.” Brown, for example, once communicated earth and dirt. Now it is most often associated with coffee and chocolate, reflecting the growth of these industries, she says.
Mark Woodman, a product consultant and former president of US-based colour forecasting trade body Color Marketing Group, believes the importance of colour is demonstrated by the investments companies make in getting the right colour for their products. “Colours have to connect with the zeitgeist of the times and that is what we work so hard at discerning”.
