Sign Market Color Trends

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  ISA Session Video Edits_Horizontal_Kiki Presentation.mp4 [Uplifting Inspirational music] [gfx: color explosion with Design House logo] [gfx: Kiki Redhead] Kiki Redhead [00:00:07] Hi, everyone, I'm Kiki Redhead and I'm the CMF and Trend Manager for Sherwin-Williams Performance Coatings Group. I specialize in working with our industrial product design and architectural customers to help them develop and design and inspire the next colors for their products. I work out of this amazing facility in Minneapolis called our Sherwin-Williams Design House with a wonderful team of color designers. We have some really unique initiatives and programs of services that we offer to our customers that come from right here at the Design House. And one of those is our Trend Program. [gfx: Trend Forecast Volume 2, web: designhouse.sherwin.com, Instagram: @swindustrialdesign] For the last two years at the Design House , we have launched a different trend forecast for our industrial coatings business. Now, within this forecast, we have colors designed all the way for the medical device industry to the building products industry. If you'd like a copy of this full trends forecast, you can go to designhouse.sherwin.com, where you can view an interactive magazine version of the forecast or download your own PDF. So this year's trend theme is OWN. [gfx: OWN w/people within letters & Design House logo] And this is our overarching idea for the entire collection. OWN really digs in to understanding how consumers, businesses, industries, markets and products are going to move forward in the future for the next, really, three to five years. OWN is all about our own personal ownership and also about ownership around the world. So under the overarching OWN theme, we've created three stories that will feature different colors, materials and finishes. [gfx: story names with photos of the brain, a decorative plant, a globe being washed] [photos of metallic hand, robots looking at digital image of a body, a wireframe brain] The three stories are The Adapter, The Alchemist and The Advocate. The first story adapter is really a very kind of sci fi type of story, right? It's very tech forward. It's really looking from a human-centered user-experience design aspect. So when we're visualizing how we adapt to new technologies, new lighting, new interactions and new experiences, that is really at the heart and the core of Adapter. So under each of these stories, I'm going to share with you a couple of macro drivers, what are some of the elements, the catalyst that are pushing this trend forward into the marketplace and into the industry? And then I'm going to share a couple of color examples with you. So the first for Adapter is this idea of backlit signage, LED technologies, shifting and changing light temperatures, and even using color as an opportunity to enhance the experience of the signage. The second macro theme for The Adapter is all about digital, so you can see right now already how we're talking very tech. We've got backlit. Now we've got digital. These displays are touch screen, they might be voice-activated. We're seeing 3D, VR experiences where waves are almost look like they're jumping out of the top of a building. This is really about creating a visual experience for the individual, the human that's going to see and interact with the product and also how tactile the user might experience the display. So digital displays moving forward are going to be even more important in the signage marketplace. So the third and final macro driver for Adapter is silver, smooth silver, stainless silver, sleek, brushed, patterned, anodized and high gloss, low gloss, middle class, you name it, silver and architecture and really unique silver designs in signage. Now, silver, we're actually talking about it more as a foundation, something that you can pair with any other color, any other metal or any other metallic and will really be more of a grounding type of feel with this. So as a macro driver, it's pushing some of the other trends forward even faster. So the first of four colors that I want to share with you under The Adapter trend story is of Resilience. [gfx: rocket taking off with blue background, whales swimming in blue ocean, blue signage and color palette.] And boy, isn't Navy a resilient color. It's classic and trendy. Our Navy was inspired by space travel and ocean exploration. So all of these kind of elements around exploring and science and also Naval was the Sherwin-Williams color of the year for 2020. OK, so the second color I'm really excited to talk to you about this one today Filtered Fate. [gfx: neon signage, people working on side of building, camera lens, color palette.] This is our translucent sign technology. And doesn't it just look really amazing, paired with monumental architecture and also in these really cool vibe spaces like restaurants and clubs, this translucent color is really a unique aqua and it could go bluer or it could go greener for your customers. [gfx: sitting at desk, gold microphone, gold fence] The third color is Interface. Interface is this really unique champagne, satin, metallic finish, so it has a little bit of a shiny, sparkly, glimmery, shimmery effect to it and it balances really, really well between a gold and silver kind of right in the middle. The last color in our Adapter story is Authenticity. [gfx: sitting at computer with screen glow, nvidia signage, city skyline] This is a high gloss charcoal gray with just a hint of dusty purple as an undertone. It kind of reminds me of that glow that you get when you're sitting in front of your computer late at night in the dark or that dusty haze that you might see over a big city skyline. This Authenticity is our charcoal gray. [photos of kids w/VR goggles, campus layout, a heart made from foliage, heating gold ring w/flame] The Alchemist is the second of our three trend stories, and The Alchemist is all about local, local businesses, local restaurants and the local community. It's all about rural, suburban and urban neighborhoods, tight knit communities that really focus on supporting each other at that hyper local level. Our first macro driver for Alchemist is all about sustainability. This is natural organic reuse, recycled second life-cycle, product design. And this is all about creating unique ways to tell your brand story and to tell your business story through organic and natural materials. The metal's macro driver metalic mica finishes, natural metals, you've got everything from gold to rose, copper, corten, bronze, champagne, which we talked about earlier, silver, which we talked about earlier, steel, blackened iron. The list goes on and on. But these core metals are really what grounds us. It's also a huge driver for some of the accent colors and other natural materials that come around it. It's also a beautiful finish on any historic building, wood, brick or stone. So natural metals, metallics and mica finishes are a great go-to for signage. [gfx: mushrooms, wavy building, forging hammer and poker] Talking about metals and metallics, our first of four colors for The Alchemist is Forage, literally forged from the forest, forged from metal. And this color is really kind of a mushroom, pale, taupe bronze, mushroom, pale taupe bronze. Right? It can go a little bit warmer. It can go a little bit cooler. Check it out on that really interesting metal wavy pattern up on top, almost like a roof or building type of application. [gfx: under a metal bridge, inside office space, brick wall] Our second color is Rurban. Rurban is that combination between suburban, urban and rural, and this color really encompasses all of that kind of history and historic aspects of brick, lumber and steel. So we even see a color of corten. Now, this particular color, in our forecast, is developed in our Coil Print Technology. It's a two-coat system and it's really for application over aluminum siding, aluminum curtain walls. It's more for the building products industry than the sign industry. But, what I think you can really do here is take out that copper metalic or take out that terracotta base color. And those would be great accents for the sign industry. [gfx: black sign w/gold letters, golden pond reflection, overhead farm harvester] Enriched is a satin gold that has a little bit of a wheatgrass green tinge to the gold, but it really is very beautiful, rich and warm and welcoming type of gold. You can find this color in a solid. You could also do this color in a mica metallic. So this color really plays very, very well with all of the other natural elements and really creates this feeling of luxury. [gfx: green bicycle, gradd, green and white lockers] Our fourth and final color for Alchemist is Grass Roots. Now, this color is pretty bold green. It's probably going to be pretty specialized for signage, probably most likely someone's brand color or something along those lines. But I don't want you to get hung up on the specific color space of this green. What I really want this message to be today, about Grassroots, is that any kind of grassy and nature green color, keep your eye out for those in the next three to five years because they are going to continue to get more and more trendy. [phots of red warning horns, globe being washed, trash heap] Our third and final story for the trend program today is The Advocate. Now, The Advocate is really global-minded. They're thinking about how their business might be in all sorts of different countries all over the world. They're thinking about conservation and air quality. They're thinking about getting their message out and voicing their thoughts and business products all around the world. The Advocate is really pushing to advocate for something important to them. The solo macro driver that I'd like to talk about for Advocate is all about wayfinding. But wayfinding has several different kind of micro elements to the whole idea of wayfinding. It's kind of become a universal art of inclusiveness. So we're using things like icons and adding second and third languages. We're using numbers and letters. We're using arrows and a lot more ways that we are incorporating the vocabulary and language to talk to people from all around the world, wherever you are. And one of two colors I'd like to talk to you today about Advocate is Phoenix Rising. [gfx: red sign, flames on land reflecting off water, Spy Museum] It is this fiery red color and it really ignites a lot of attention. So when you're seeing this high energy, highly reflective red on buildings, on signage, as an accent piece, you're really drawing and creating a lot of attention to your building. [gfx: bronze faucet, bronze fixtures on side of building, face mosaic] Our final color for Advocate is Equality, the perfect balance between warm and cool. The Sherwin-Williams 2021 Color Of The Year, Urbain Bronze. We're seeing this color used in interiors, on exteriors and all around the world. [gfx: Trend Forecast Volume 2, web: designhouse.sherwin.com, Instagram: @swindustrialdesign] I really hope that you enjoyed our color trend presentation for the sign industry. Our stories of The Adapter, The Alchemist and The Advocate are colors spanning from navy blue to bronze to gold and green.

Sherwin-Williams color expert Kiki Redhead explores key color trends that will be relevant in the sign market for the next 3-5 years.