Ch29. Unwrapping CMF Design on Quality Assurance by Sticking to the Formula

For the midcentury house project that I was working on, some metal details needed to be restored to its original color. After browsing through the existing selection, I ended up mixing three colors from Dulux (a consumer-facing brand by AkzoNobel) to finally get my desired shade of warm red (中文版)

CMF is a specific discipline within industrial design that focuses on the development of a product’s color, material, and finish. Unwrap CMF shares bite-sized stories of CMF Design to inform and inspire those interested in this niche yet fascinating field, with digestible contents for anyone and everyone.

The repaint task was not finished at once which means I needed to remix the three colors to get the same shade again and again. Luckily, since I’ve worked with colors for so long and there wasn’t consumer-facing pressure, I was able to do it without having to write down a formula to follow through. This method is definitely UNACCEPTABLE for any top paint vendor. 𝙒𝙝𝙮 𝙞𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩?

Think like this: when baking at home, it’s okay to go off the recipe by a few grams. With your most-confident dishes, you can even go off without having to measure anything at all!

But that is not the case for a nation-wide franchise serving thousands or millions of customers. There is no tolerance for any slightest change in the taste, quality, or food safety.

Same rules apply to paint. This is what happens throughout product development: first, CMF Designers review samples during color fine-tuning, once color and finishing are decided, the formula is recorded by the vendor, which will then be tested throughout trial production cycles. Minor adjustment may happen if the original formula doesn’t pass through.

After the formula is tested and fixed, going off even just by a milligram can mess up the color, which means lower yield rate in production and more money spent. Or worse — put quality to risk. Imagine if the paint starts to peel off in consumers’ hands. What a PR disaster that is going to be?!

No wonder why top paint brands can be somewhat pricier than local shops. The price you pay includes insurance to guarantee the quality and stability that your brand name stands for 😇

Mixing paint without writing down the formula? Big NO-NO in real production development!

Even for home interior paint, each color in the selection has its own formula for a stable result.

Every color card on the shelf has its own fixed formula.

After the color is selected, the paint is carefully and accurately mixed by computer.

Enjoy learning? Use the CMF terminologies mentioned above and continue on with your own research journey on the web. Comments and inspirations are welcome!
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