• Creating Color Palettes: Monika Fecht - Trend As A Cultural Reflex (Mood Boards 2007)
• Creating Color Palettes 2: Helen Gurura - The Making of an Exterior Color Palette
• Creating Color Palettes 3: Monika Fecht - Color Me 2008
• Creating Color Palettes 5: Helen Gurura - A Functional Approach to Color Use
• XYMARA Design Award Jury - Bio Monika Fecht
• Creating Color Palettes 6: The Business of Color at RENOLIT
• Creating Color Palettes 7: Monika Fecht - Discover yourself!

A World Of Contrasts

How do color stylists create the color palettes for next year's products? In the fourth of our series, Monika Fecht, Head of Design Management at Renolit, returns to show us the mood boards she developed to create the colors for 2008-2009. Click onto the photos to get better quality images.

Text by Monika Fecht and Frank Stein, Mood Boards by Monika Fecht

The coming year is offering a world of contrasts: Man cannot be figured out as easily as before any more. The inconsequence of the modern hybrid character becomes a conscious style in fashion. There are no incompatible contradictions any more. They become the new aesthetic unities. Man/woman combines natural materials with high-tech fibres, futurism with the retro style of the 30s and 40s and delicate, light fabrics with thick and heavy cloth, extremely saturated colours with pallid colours, slender forms with XL style as well as relief structures with smooth surfaces. However, the boundaries do not become blurred here. Within the schizophrenic commitments of this modern type, the contours remain sharp. The new colour palette 2008/2009 shows a well balanced range of cold and warm shades. The material colours are in symbiosis with nature and its natural resources. In the new colours, the light of the surroundings mirrors the colouring of the material, be it coal, stone, concrete, cement, asphalt, chalk, lime, graphite, copper, zinc or silver.

City Light

Black and white - The current trend of black and white in sharp contrast to each other will also continue in the coming season. The colours of the night are being enlivened by the lights of the city. The urban universe, with its light and shade, inspires us to create with the new shades, designs and surfaces.

Stone Light

Grey shades and flash pink - Grey is the major theme of the coming season. Grey is “triste“, they say. But this does not apply to 2008. All shades of grey are now something other than boring; shiny surfaces, material combinations and draped appearances make the look alive. Sequins, silver highlights and lurex embroidery create cool accents in fashion.

Beauty Light

Off-white, beige, copper and sepia - The off-whites of the coming season show the colours of lime, gypsum and chalk, milk, raw cotton or porcelain with a gentle hint of grey. Relief structures and reflective effects are also to be found in the materials and surfaces of furniture. Pearls, borders, tulle and lace are used in fashion.

Luxury Light

Yellowish-green, cognac, bronze and shades of red - The colours of faded and aged Etruscan frescos are the inspiration for the warm cognac, mustard and yellowish-green shades and combinations thereof. They can be combined with shades of brown with hints of earthy green to resemble the colour of fallen leaves on the compost heap.

Nature Light

Blue and green shades, jeans blue and fern green - The ecological consciousness, which is widespread in society is changing the colour range towards more shades of blue and green. In the furniture market the proportion of these colours is slowly increasing. New fashion labels commit to fairer production conditions and more environmentally-friendly materials. Modern textiles combine natural materials with functional components made of metals and plastics.

Disco Light

The colours of the rainbow – signal yellow, red, orange, blue and green - The monochrome “good humour“ colours are an expression of the lightness of being, carefree amusement in the happy hours of discos. The psychedelic surroundings with their thrilling neon colours, reflections and overlays, rhythms, stripes, rows and spirals inspire new designs.

Since early 2003, Monika Fecht has been head of the design atelier of RENOLIT AG in Worms, one of the leading European manufacturers of plastic foils. From 1990 to 1997, Monika Fecht – a trained cabinet-maker and certified industrial designer – was with Mathias Hoffmann Design in Tübingen, developing upholstered furniture for well-known furniture makers. From 1997 to 2000, she ran the design studio of the foil manufacturer Konrad Hornschuch in Weissbach and, in the year 2000, assumed responsibility for design development in the business area Woodbased Materials of Pfleiderer AG, Neumarkt.

Originally published in frank.stein magazine. Reproduced by kind permission of Monika Fecht and Frank Stein.