Monthly Color Inspirations - Heather

As summer begins to blend into fall, we take time to reflect on our August color inspiration: Heather.

Heather is a blend of neutral creams and greys with soft pinks and purples. Reminiscent of classic mauve, Heather is perfect for the transition of seasons.

Bright, but delicate, Heather compliments traditional neutrals, sharp black and white, and bold tones like burgundy. Much like August is a bridge between hot summer days and cool fall afternoons, Heather is a bridge between classic and contemporary colors.  With more depth than lilacs and pale pinks, Heather provides an intensity without intimidation.

Looking to get expand you color knowledge? Register for an Americhem U session today!                                                                                                                                            

Images: Left | Top Middle | Bottom Middle | Right

Monthly Color Inspiration - Boisterous

July brings a flurry of summer activity and Boisterous is a wonderful representation of that!

The perfect inspiration for bright summer days and warm celebrations, Boisterous is in our family of yellows and was originally introduced at Americhem’s 2016-2017 Color Trends presentation as part of the “Welcome Distraction” palette.

Yellow is the best color to create enthusiasm for life and can awaken greater confidence with optimism. It’s the color of happiness, enlightenment and creativity. The sentiment behind yellow is based on where it is found in nature, in the natural world yellow is the color of sunflowers and daffodils. A neon, lemon hue, Boisterous is a rambunctious and rowdy tone compared to some tamer yellows.  Ready for anything, it’s about letting off steam and enjoying life.

Being the lightest hue of the spectrum, yellow is uplifting and illuminating. A simple color that offers hope, cheerfulness and fun. Boisterous takes those characteristics to a new height with its bright tone.

Looking to get professional insight into color? Register for an Americhem U session today!

Images: Left | Top Right | Middle Right | Bottom Right

Monthly Color Inspiration - Cool Mint

As we leave the month of June, we can take time to reflect on this month’s color inspiration: Cool Mint.

Cool Mint is in our family of greens and is perfect as we transition to the hottest days of the year.

Generally, green shades can be taken to represent life itself and the essence of every living thing on earth. It can be jealously or envy, but it also denotes growth and renewal. Green is frequently associated with springtime and the re-birth that happens to our earth every year. As summer begins, we can fully appreciate the scope of this rebirth in our own communities. Cool Mint is fresh and healthy, and can represent a new beginning. When combined with a wide variety of other colors, green can take on a life of its own.

Plant a seed in peoples’ mind that will surely grow with the power of green. Let Americhem help put Cool Mint to work for you.

Images: Top Left | Top Right | Bottom Left | Bottom Right

Monthly Color Inspirations - Turquoise

The color turquoise controls emotional balance and gives a sense of stability. Turquoise is a great color to have around you, as it helps with clear thinking and decision-making.

The color turquoise will make you feel happy and relaxed because it combines the light blue of the sky with the invigorating green of the seas. With that combination of blue and a small amount of yellow, turquoise fits on the color scale between green and blue.

Global Meaning of Turquoise*

• In western cultures, the turquoise gemstone is the symbol of friendship and brings peace to the home and good fortune to the owner.
• Native Americans associate the color of turquoise with the blue sky and the green earth. It is seen by many as being symbolic our roots in nature.
• Tiffany Blue has grown to represent the luxury jewelry store, Tiffany & Co. The color has even been trademarked.

We can help you convey clarity, harmony and creativity to your customers with the perfect shade of turquoise. Contact us today.

 *http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/color-Turquoise.html

 

  

Monthly Color Inspirations - White

The color white represents purity, innocence, wholeness and completion. In color psychology, white is the color of new beginnings, a blank canvas waiting to be written upon. White promotes a feeling of fresh beginnings, renewal, and clearing obstacles.

There are very few negative meanings of white, but too much white can be cold, isolating and empty. As opposed to black in the US, other cultures use white to signify death and mourning. In these cultures, death usually means the end of one life and the beginning of another, moving forward to a new life.

We can help you convey cleanliness and simplicity with the perfect shade of white. Contact us today.

Monthly Color Inspirations - Brown

The color brown is serious and down to earth with properties like stability, structure and support. The warmth of the color relates to the protection and support of the family unit with a sense of duty and responsibility.

The color brown symbolizes quality in everything - a comfortable home, the best food and drink. The warmth of woodgrain home accents relaxes you with and creates a sense of security. Brown provides a feeling of good health, brings you down to earth and adds order to your life.

Global Meaning of Brown*

• With its connection to the outdoors and down-to-earth activities, brown is suitable for businesses promoting outdoor products and services.

Unique Meaning of Brown in Different Cultures*

• In Chinese horoscopes, brown is the color for earth.

We can help you convey endurance, duty and stability to your customers with the perfect shade of brown. Contact us today.
*http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/color-brown.html

Color Trends 2016- 2017

Color is our business. We work every day to ensure that our customers get the color they need for their products. But we don’t just match your color, we design your color to look great with the utmost in product performance.

To help our customers keep up with the latest product design trends, we just introduced the 2016-2017 Americhem Color Trends forecast in Dalton, Georgia. I presented our color trends to a record number of attendees in hopes of providing them with aesthetic inspiration. It was great to have so many creative minds in one room. As lead color trends specialist, I get the privilege to live and breathe colors all year round. The team and I conduct a lot of research and collaborate to bring the color trends to life. We are confident that these colors will guide consumer preference in the years to come. Our program can be valuable in keeping industry professionals ahead of the curve when it comes to color choices.

I took the audience through colors and palette themes by exploring images representing real life architecture, fashion, high tech gadgets, interior design and more. We find that these images are essential in demonstrating our trends in everyday settings.

This year, the trends are comprised of six color palettes including:

• Rush Hour- The beginning and ending of every work day and work week.

• Office Diligence- Hues from this palette are observed in everyday work. 

• Casual Friday- TGIF everyone! A day to wind down and relax at the end of the week, but also to provide inspiration for a Friday night out or a weekend getaway.

• Night Life- Night Life is glamorous and sophisticated, with contrasting colors that are used to accentuate luminous effects. Sparkles, glitter, shiny fabrics, and textures abound.

• Welcome Distraction- This palette is a mix and match of bright and medium shades, perhaps eccentric, but also playful and energetic.

• Sunday Brunch- The pastel hues of this palette remind us of traditional brunch foods and beverages, and impart a feeling of calm.

Our audience was so receptive to the presentation and I was pleased to see the feedback they provided.

Mary K. said, “Great inclusion of various cultural influences - fashion, pop culture, technology.” We were also told by Cherise P., “I enjoyed the way the presentation was given as a story that we could relate to. The visual presentation was well put together.” I enjoyed talking to all of the designers about the colors and it was a great experience for me as a presenter to see people get inspired.

Color trends apply to all industries interested in accenting their products with innovative, modern colors. Our forecasts reach across any and all product categories. From carpet to automotive and apparel to packaged goods, consumers are looking for the latest colors to make them stand out from the crowd. Please reference our color trends inspiration sheets to see how you can introduce our colors in any setting. 

And now, for the first time, you can experience our color trends in an upcoming webinar November 5. Register Today. If you are interested in learning more you can contact me at abarto@americhem.com.

Aubrey Barto
Color Trends Specialist, Americhem

Color of the Month - Orange

The color orange evokes thoughts of fall. Of changing leaves, sunsets and desert sandscapes. It’s active. It’s wholesome. 

Orange is vibrant. It symbolizes energy, vitality, adventure, warmth, and good health. Darker oranges offer a sense of comfort while lighter oranges are soothing.

But orange has a bit less intensity than red, calmed by the cheerfulness of yellow. "Orange is red brought nearer to humanity by yellow." Wassily Kandinsky, Russian painter and art theorist.

Global Meanings of Orange*

• Orange is associated with vitamin C and good health.
• Orange is symbolic of autumn.
• Orange is the color of life rafts, hazard cones, and universally associated with safety.

That’s why the orange family of colors from Americhem offer so many opportunities to differentiate your products. Let us know how we can help you design your next orange today.

*www.colormatters.com

Color of the Month: Yellow

Being the lightest hue of the spectrum, yellow is uplifting and illuminating. A simple color that offers hope, cheerfulness and fun.

Yellow is the best color to create enthusiasm for life and can awaken greater confidence with optimism. It’s the color of happiness, enlightenment and creativity. The sentiment behind yellow is based on where it is found in nature, in the natural world yellow is the color of sunflowers and daffodils.

Global Meanings of Yellow*

• In almost every culture yellow represents sunshine, happiness, and warmth.
• The human eye processes yellow first. This explains why it is used for cautionary signs and emergency rescue vehicles. 

Unique Meanings of Yellow in Different Cultures*

• In Japan, yellow often represents courage.**
• The ancient Mayans associated the color yellow with the direction South.

Brighten the lives of your customers, let Americhem create your yellow today. 

*http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/color-yellow.html

**www.colormatters.com

Material Suppliers Part of a Growing Trend at Fakuma 2014

Here at the Fakuma trade fair in Friedrichshafen, Germany, material suppliers like Americhem are part of a growing trend. The fair has developed from its roots as a plastics machinery exhibition when it began in 1981. According to P.E. Schall, the fair’s organizer, what started as a show based primarily on injection molding equipment has evolved to include suppliers of resins, compounds, molded parts and extrusion and thermoforming equipment among its 1,772 exhibitors. This is Americhem’s first time exhibiting at the show, and we’ve been pleased with what we’ve experienced.

The traffic has been brisk, particularly during the midday hours. Americhem has welcomed existing customers as well as new contacts throughout the first four days of the show, which closes tomorrow. What has surprised us is the amount of synthetic fiber producers and converters that have visited during the fair, whose primary audience come from the plastics industry. They have been receptive to the line of color and additive masterbatches that we have promoted, many of which have been newly introduced over the past year.

We’ve also welcomed writers and editors from various industry publications. Plastics News produced three English language show daily newspapers for the first time and Americhem’s products and services were featured in a full-page article distributed Wednesday. Senior reporter Frank Esposito has visited our stand on a couple of occasions and shared his observations with us. Esposito has interviewed numerous material producers scattered throughout the show’s twelve large halls, and categorizes the show as a big, busy fair with injection molding as the dominant process. However, he observed that there are not the overwhelming amount of visitors that characterize the K show, held once every three years in Germany, making the show a more pleasant experience for those who attended.

What initially has been considered a regional show primarily aimed at the three-country ‘DACH’ triangle of Germany (D), Austria (A), and Switzerland (CH), Fakuma has grown to include many visitors and exhibitors from throughout Europe, including the central and eastern regions, as well as a significant amount of companies based in North America. Asian visitors have not seemed as prevalent, but we have welcomed several throughout the first four days. The town of Friedrichshafen, with its picturesque location on the shores of Lake Constance on the Swiss-German border, is a big draw for visitors throughout the world. The region is characterized by beautiful rolling hills and the charming German countryside, including plentiful apple orchards, vineyards and livestock farming. This is in stark contrast with K show’s urban setting in Düsseldorf.

For our part, Americhem Europe Ltd. has been proud to make our debut at this year’s show, and we’ve considered the audience ideal for our plastics and fibers businesses. We offer a hearty thanks to all the visitors we’ve hosted and we look forward to participation in next year’s fair.

Scott Blanchard

Senior Corporate Marketing Specialist

Color Trends 2015-2016

It’s amazing how many reactions color can evoke. It can convey a broad range of emotions. It can make things stand out from their surroundings. It can make people excited, or calm, or inspire them. It can make people do things they otherwise wouldn't do, or it can make them refrain from doing something.

At Americhem, we are very lucky to be able to help our customers represent color on an everyday basis. Each and every day, we ensure that our customers can convey the proper mood, say the right things and inspire their customers to use and purchase their products. As a marketing professional, I can’t imagine any concept that’s more exciting to market than color. You literally have the world’s broadest palette of options to choose from.

But on a more basic level, color itself speaks to us in indescribable ways. Author and poet Oscar Wilde put it this way, “Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.”

That’s why it was so exciting to attend Americhem’s September presentation of “Color Trends 2015-2016” in Dalton, Georgia. This event launched this year’s color forecast, and we couldn't have had a more attentive or inspired audience than the full room of carpet designers and other carpet professionals in attendance. Our color trends expert took the audience through six distinct palettes with hundreds of images from the worlds of art, nature, architecture, fashion, high tech gadgets, interior design and more. These images helped illustrate the fact that these colors will guide consumer preference in the years to come. You can read more about the palettes and the colors here.

But why are color trends so important to companies, designers and marketers alike? Research has proven that color is a huge driver of consumer decision making. According to the Seoul International Color Expo, when asked to approximate the importance of color when buying products, 84.7 percent of the total respondents thought that color accounts for more than half among the various factors important for choosing products. In addition, according to research conducted by Xerox Corporation, 92% of people believe color presents an image of impressive quality, while 90% feel color can assist in attracting new customers.

Throughout our decades of existence, Americhem has staked our reputation on the power that color holds over all of us. That’s why programs such as our color trends forecasts can be so valuable in keeping industry professionals ahead of the curve when it comes to color choices. Color determines how people perceive your product and even your brand. We’re here to help you make good, informed choices.

If you’re interested in learning more about Americhem’s 2015-2016 color trends forecast, please contact me at sblanchard@americhem.com.

Scott Blanchard

Senior Corporate Marketing Specialist, Americhem, Inc.