Coatings
Driving Color Design
What colors will you see on the road in three to five years? That’s the vision the BASF design team offers automotive OEM customers through expertise in trend research and the design and creation of bold, unique colors.
Color is a major and strategic factor that defines the first impression of a vehicle. It calls attention to its shape and the automaker’s brand image. A well-suited color on a car can be a make-or-break decision for a potential buyer. Designing a car color is challenging. It considers the complex interplay of hue, saturation, texture, surface, and metallic or pearlescent effects. BASF’s color designers continually monitor the trend indicators that determine the future look of vehicles and create appealing colors for a very demanding market. BASF’s world leadership in color keeps automotive designers on the cutting edge, delivering what their customers want, and staying ahead of the competition.
AUVOTs - Virtual Color Visualization
Automotive paint is one of the most complex color themes. To gain a realistic impression of colors, effects and surfaces on a complete car during the early design phase, the designers of BASF’s Coatings division have developed virtual “AUVOT” (Automotive Vehicles of Trends) shapes. BASF’s AUVOTs display the interaction between color and geometry, and the importance of light in the digital world of automotive coatings. They help automotive manufacturers understand the impact of color in industrial design in one shape with two distinct sides.
“To visualize and display all elements relevant to coatings – such as the color itself, the effect and the surface – is already challenging in the real world and requires deep knowledge. Translating this knowledge into the virtual world and bridging those two worlds opens a new field of work. Our mission was the technically correct and primary realistic appearance of paint as well as a persuasive portrayal of a color concept on the right shape.” - Florina Trost Design EMEA
Global Design Expertise
With a global team and design centers in Asia Pacific, EMEA and the Americas, BASF blends global presence, local expertise, a deep understanding of color trends and thoughtful analysis of the competitive market.
The customer is at the center of all that we do, and our design team works with nearly all Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) of vehicles around the world. We inspire automotive designers and support them with custom solutions including digital and virtual color tools to help them drive their global color development and coating application programs.
