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Colorful World
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| A Glimpse into the Automotive Color Design Process |
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| Updated |
Jun 10, 2004 21:20:33 |
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 16 ( -2 -12.5% ) | | Author | Tara Baukus Mello |
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Description:
When buying a new car or truck, the interior and exterior colors may be among the items you debate the most. One study indicated that 40 percent of consumers said they would not buy their first choice of automobile if it were not available in the color they wanted. Whether it's the color of a vehicle, a new couch, an item of clothing or the walls in your daughter's room, we tend to choose our colors carefully. But there's a group of people who are even more selective than you are. They are the people who decide which colors are the ones that you will want to choose from your next vehicle, chair, lipstick, winter jacket-even your next computer. For them, color is their business and if they don't make the right choices, you won't buy their products.
Eeenie, Meenie-The Selection Process
Trend-Watchers
The Right Package
What's In A Name?
Eeenie, Meenie-The Selection Process
The color palette for your new vehicle was chosen long before it traveled down the assembly line. The process begins three to four years in advance, not long after the designers have worked out the overall look of the vehicle. The designers' job in the color process is to come up with color choices that make the vehicle look best, while the product planning group ensures that the colors are ones that the public will accept when the vehicle is on sale in the showroom in a few years.
"When our (the designers and the product planners) ideas are radically different, we can make recommendations to the designers, such as to look at warmer hues," said Christine Dickey, color and trim manager in Corporate Product Planning at Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., who oversees product planning for both the Toyota and Lexus product lines. "In the early stages this can be difficult, because we (product planning) don't necessarily know what the vehicle looks like."
Choosing colors without knowing what the car looks like? If it sounds like a bit of a shot in the dark, it is, but these people study color trends every day and, just like a doctor can make an educated guess based on your symptoms, color experts can come close to knowing what consumers will like based on the group the auto manufacturer is expecting as the target buyer.
Trend-Watchers
People who work in this field are really Trend-Watchers. Extreme sport apparel, makeup and home furnishings are just a few of the areas Dickey watches regularly. She also is a member of a non-profit association called Color Marketing Group (CMG), a group of 1500 color designers who forecast the future of color for many industries, including automotive. Each year CMG members work as a group to produce the Color Directions Forecast, a document that shows projected color palettes one to three years in advance.
Color designers at automakers may also hire a color consultant to help them with the process. Color consultants like Laraine Turner, principal, Jolley/Turner Group in Long Beach, California, often work in a wide variety of industries and can offer a different perspective. "Because it's easy to get immersed in a project, an outside consultant can help a manufacturer by validating the color choices to make sure that they fit the niche market the manufacturer is looking for," said Turner.
The average life for an automotive color is seven years, which means that fashion trends often move to quickly to be inspiration for the vehicle market. Toyota's Dickey looks frequently to the colors used on furniture and in home fabrics. When targeting a younger or more active buyer, she will sometimes take her cues from sporting goods or action recreation equipment.
Color and design consultant Carol Byrne of TransporTex Design and Marketing Company in Scottsdale, Arizona, also watches the home furnishings and home design markets. "I particularly watch the colors used in accessories, such as a throw pillow or a scarf. If the color does well, then often the next year you'll see it on a blouse or a single chair. The following year it might be used on a whole suit or as a wall color," she said.
The Right Package
Once manufacturers have a good idea of the color palette they want to use, they must make sure not only that the interior and exterior work together, but also that both complement the image of the overall vehicle. Paint and fabric manufacturers work with automakers presenting them with hundreds of possibilities until they work out the right color palette- one that fits with the target buyer's lifestyle, the image of the vehicle and is within the manufacturer's price range.
As the color marketing manager for DuPont Herberts Automotive, Bob Daily works with the manufacturers to get the colors they want, with the right look. This means that Bob not only has to know about color trends, but the different ways the color can be applied to get the right effect. "For example, sleek vehicles, such as the Ford Taurus often are painted with fine flakes of paint that contain mica or aluminum to give it a look similar to silk fabric. More angular vehicles, such as the Mercury Cougar, often use a coarser flake that accentuate the lines of the vehicle," said Daily.
Interiors also need to project the right image and complement most skin tones. "The colors used can't drain the color from a person's face and the patterns shouldn't be so busy that they compete with the passengers," said Byrne. Fabrics used on interiors must also match the image of the vehicle. Fabrics on a van might be more playful, while a high-end luxury sedan might feature leather with suede or textured leather accents.
What's In A Name?
Apparently there's a lot to the names of car colors. "I used to think the most subjective thing on car was the paint, now I think it's the name of the color," said Toyota's Dickey. At Toyota, colors started receiving names when the Lexus division was launched ten years ago. Today, the process of naming a new color takes six weeks and involves people from multiple departments who look at paint chips and suggest names. Dickey and her assistant will brainstorm names as well, eventually narrowing down the choices to four or five names. Then, everyone in her department casts their votes and the winning names are selected. Dickey is careful to make sure the name of the color reflects the image of the vehicle. Truck colors, for example, get rugged, outdoorsy names.
Dickey has learned her lesson about names that might be seen as too feminine. In 1997, the color Lavender Steel, a gray with a purple tint, was introduced on the Toyota Tacoma pickup. "Orders for this color truck were just two percent and a member of the sales division suggested we change the name. Normally we wouldn't do this for fear it would create confusion among dealers and body shops, but since the sales were so low, we decided to try it. For 1998, we changed the name to Cool Steel. Orders immediately doubled and sales rose steadily after that," said Dickey. |
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