Design Trends from Milan: Colour Magic

Looking for the next big thing in colour is often the real driving force behind a trend hunter. Yet it seems that some designers are looking to thwart this rationale by subverting their colour approach and not committing to one particular colour in their designs.

At the Milan Design Festival we saw a number of product examples that are re-positioning the role of colour from the arbitrary to the main focus. Colour is adding an extra layer to products, whether that is via an iridescent sheen, playing with depth with RGB colours, or using plain old holography to add an optical illusion.

Even though this trend is a bit ‘Magic Eye’ (those horrific 90s pictures that only made sense if you stared cross-eyed at a particular angle…), we like that it is inflating the importance of colour, cleverly adding a layer of depth and performance to static objects.