There are many fantastic trend agencies globally that provide color reports. So, you might ask, why do we create a new service?

We want to achieve a revolution of color reports – to go beyond the traditional mediums. Compared to traditional color reports with 2-dimensional color data, the 7SEC. CMF Futures is serving the technology industry with actionable CMF tools linked to actual material technologies.

We started the work with a mindset to learn from you, the users. We tested the accuracy of our own strategy with global surveys to industry experts. We asked amongst other topics, what was generally working for them and where they felt was space for improvement with the current services they were commissioning to. One of the hypotheses in our strategy was that traditional format of a physical book was constraining to the space and time. E-learning is growing in importance and we want to create tools that provide flexibility in where and how you learn. Digital learning is the quickest growing market in the education industry, with a whopping 900% growth since 2000 by KPMG (https://e-student.org/e-learning-statistics/).

An ongoing strategic direction for us is to continuously improve the interactivity level and improve on the inspiration of the future reports. Our volume I, Utopia e-book, is answering also to the trend of CMF industry going towards phygital– holistic physical and digital product and service design – and how we as CMF designers need to master both aspects.

If you want to be invited to be part of the co-creation journey, send us a note and you will receive the future surveys too.

In the survey we asked what the industry experts consider as a priority of all the trends. 87.5% answered: sustainability with futuristic twist. The report is based on our extensive 7SEC. Material library with over 12 000 material samples from our network of material suppliers. The global pandemic has accelerated some of the mega trends, with lasting impact in consumer behavior and we are exploring the implications to the brands and to the CMF design in the report.

When we started the research for the volume I, we had to acknowledge the sheer fact that we only see the beginning of the changes driven by the aftermath of global pandemic to the material technologies and to the CMF design. This crisis demands strategic thinking, creativity and co-creation to come up with innovative solutions that support the global consumers.

These CMF directions reflect general insight, current material technologies and best practises based on the information available now, and cannot contain all the information needed to determine the future for specific brand strategies. Yet we are sure these directions cannot simply be ignored.

As a method for the 7SEC. CMF Futures© we research wide amount of data, analyzing into technology industry specific CMF trends and translating this with global material supplier’s solutions. Our trend reports will aim to deliver interactive CMF samples for multisensorial experience and easy implementation to your product portfolio. The CMF directions are created with material technology specific colors through the science of Applied Color Psychology to match technology industry.

Utopia e-book: sustainability with future twist

In a world of climate change, technology break throughs, demographic changes and shifts on many fronts, the concept of utopias has become a life line of hope for us today because it gives us something to strive towards. It motivates us to rethink the structures and methods of the last century and find entirely new, better solutions.

We can see today the return of Utopianism through the concept of sustainability that becomes the utopian horizon itself. The global drivers for theme Utopia are the growing consumer attitudes towards sustainability and safety due to the pandemic. Along with the consumer behavior, corporate attitudes and regulations around the world are driving sustainable strategies. The CMF trend report is created celebrating this mindset, with actionable tools for sustainable materials for technology industry. You can access the report here.

Content of the e-book:

– Mega, macro and micro level trends

– Supportive data

– Industry benchmarking

– Mood boards

– Inspirational videos

– Digital 3D CMF

– Material directions

– CMF color directions fit to technology industry

– Language variants: English & Chinese

If you need Chinese language variant, please contact our China team at WeChat omuus_China

Utopia CMF Collection.

The CMF report is supported by limited edition CMF Collection, to be released August 2020. Since this is a novelty service for which we are collaborating with the suppliers means that the physical CMF Collection is under development. You can preorder the collection here.

The 1^stvolume of Utopia focus on the sustainable bio-materials, composites and transparent materials, sourced globally from our 7SEC. Material Library supplier base.

Content of the CMF Collection:

– Curated collection of physical CMF samples: unique custom-made reference CMF samples and supplier material samples

– CMF coding with material supplier information

– Material technology information

– Language variants: English & Chinese

If you need Chinese language variant, please contact our China team at WeChat omuus_China

A final thank you: with gratitude to the industry experts for answering the surveys and helping to form the volume 1 directions. Thank you Business Finland for supporting our digital mission, and enabling long dream to come true. Cheers to Omuus global team for yet again talented team work. We are in awe of all the brands and suppliers that has been highlighted in this report of the strategic work towards sustainable future. Let’s work together for better tomorrow.

Stay safe!

Annina Verkkomäki

Chief Creative Director

7SEC. FUTURES ©

7sec-cmf.com

“ Working with Omuus team was a very positive, inspiring and enriching experience. With the help of the Omuus team we got the keys to create a coherent visual look to support the brand creation and growth to global markets.“ – Susanna Kääriäinen, CEO Kultavilla.

OMUUS is one of the service providers for Business Finland innovation voucher. We love to be part of bringing new innovations to market and will help you every step of the way to achieve your company goals.

The innovation voucher is a grant for a new product or service development for Finnish Companies.It is intended for SMEs (Small and medium-sized enterprises) who have a new product or service idea with international potential, and for which the company needs external expertise. It is worth 5000€ +VAT, incl. 1000€ +VAT self-financing contribution.

Here is an example of a project we did a few years back for Kultavilla.

KULTAVILLA

The pure Nordic nature captured into cuddlesome textiles that enhance our wellbeing. That is what a finnish weaving company Kultavilla offers. Located in Helsinki capital area, Kultavilla offers green and healthy textile options for consumers. Driven by the love of natural wool and the passion for designing functional woven textiles resulted to completely new combinations of natural materials, Kultavilla woollens. Their textiles exhibit the nature’s organic structures and soft colours, functional for cold winter or for milder seasons.

Omuus was supporting Kultavilla’s expansion from a manufacturer to a brand with an independent product line. The assignment covered a creation of cohesive brand look, brand creation support and a growth plan for the international market. Kultavilla received essential tangible tools such as brand elements, design guidelines and informational tools to communicate according to its values. This resulted as confidence to grow the company according to its values – credibility from authenticity.

Testimonial from Susanna Kääriäinen, CEO of Kultavilla:

“Working with Omuus team was a very positive, inspiring and enriching experience. When we started the co-operation Kultavilla had operated as a service provider for weaving services. We wanted to start creating our own productline alongside being a service provider. The main goal for the process was to create visual brand identity to support the marketing of new products and services. Omuus design drivers workshop started the project by clarifying our own value base and the foundation we would start to build on Kultavilla brand, which was realy helpful for us.

With the Design Drivers workshop Omuus managed to ’doug out’ the source of inspiration for Kultavilla, that had been the heart of the brand for many years: mystic Finnish forest. Omuus managed to woke up thoughts, feelings, product ideas and gentle feelings from the early days before we founded Kultavilla. Thoughts that had been left aside in entrepreneuer life, that had a significant impact when we founded the company and should be communicated through Kultavilla’s new visual look.

Omuus took under consideration global trends, consumer groups and defined a consumer group for global markets and used them to create the guidelines for our website and new product categories for the future. What we got was informative tools, ho to communicate according to our values in social media. With the help of the Omuus team we got the keys to create a coherent visual look to support the brand creation and growth to global markets.

During the co-operation Kultavilla got also concrete visual elements, such as coherent logo, business card, fonts and instructions to create a new website, but also confidence to grow the company according to its values where credibility comes from authenticity.  The Omuus team was very dedicated and reliable in their work. As a customer, I felt being the most important customer at that moment. I definitely recommend working with Omuus. “

We would love to hear your idea, just contact us via email or

Give a call to Annina Verkkomäki +358 40 7680127.

Here is a service package we offer, that will be tailored for your specific needs:

7SEC.^(TM)Startup is a complete service package to get started.

The package will give you a position where you can start implementing your plan.

• An assessment of the potential of innovation voucher.
  Support to fill the innovation voucher application and end report.
  The decision of granting the innovation voucher is made exclusively by Business Finland.
• The package can be tailored to your needs.It is a deep dive into a specific area of design;
  or a lighter and more comprehensive study of multiple design areas.
• A joint design brief and targets to best achieve your goals, and reviews to follow the progress.
• The cost of 5000€ +VAT can be covered by an innovation voucher, or purchased separately.

A good start for a New Decade is an interview with Karen Haller, an international author, speaker and teacher in the field of Applied Color Psychology. Having studied color for over 20 years, she understands how color affects and influences us yet how businesses and designers can use it to influence behavior.

Per Boicel from Omuus interviewed Karen about her new book about Colour that was published in 2019, covering the aspects why color psychology is such an important subject nowadays and what is the future for color psychology.

Karen, your new book ‘The Little Book of Colour’ is doing really well – Congratulations!

Thank you Per, I’m thrilled how well the book has been received in the UK – The Sunday Times named it as one of their Top 10 Design books for 2019.

The book is being translated currently into a further 12 languages so interest in the book is spreading world-wide and it shows that colour is making a comeback which is great news seeing how we have been living in a colour drought for the past decade or so.

Colour psychology is relatively unknown in many countries, could you tell us a bit what your new book is about?

The Little Book of Colour is about how to use the psychology of colour to transform our life. We are surrounded by colour and it influences everything we do. When we connect to colour, we connect to what we feel, and when we connect to what we feel we connect to who we are. Our fascination with colour has been around since the dawn of time with philosophers, physicians, scientists, psychiatrists studying this phenomenon – such as  Empedocles – c.490-c.430 BC, Aristotle 384-322 BC, Newton 1642-1727, Goethe 1749-1832, Jung 1875-1961, Bauhaus 1919-33, Wright 1939- and many more. This book explains the evolution and theories of the science of colour and my studies under the tutelage of the well-known expert in the field, Angela Wright and how the reader can then apply this to their everyday life.

What was the real gamechanger in your life that motivated you to specialise in colour psychology and work with colour science?

The epiphany moment that I described in my book was when I was studying Millinery in my twenties back in my native country Australia. I was sewing chocolate brown feathers on a teal blue hat and seeing the impact of the colours together stopped me in my tracks. I found myself saying out loud “Oh my God it’s colour”. I had no idea what it meant; I just knew I had to find out more. I was completed obsessed with why did I liked one colour and not another one? Why does some colour make us happy and some anxious? Why did I want to wear a colour one day and not the next? Why does the colour in one café want me to come in and sit for a coffee and another not?

So, I studied everything I could but there were so many questions left unanswered. It wasn’t until I was in the UK and I took a course run by the colour psychologist Angela Wright.  Angela could answer all my questions with deep understanding of why and how colour affect our mind, emotions and influences our behaviours. This is when I had my eureka moment – what I had been searching for was called Applied Colour Psychology. I stayed with Angela for a year and I think I drove her nuts by asking her so many questions until it all came together which has led me to doing the work I do today.

Why do you think a book about colour psychology is so important today?

This book is putting the knowledge of how to use colour in a positive way in the hands of everyone. It shows how you can use colour as a form of self-expression no matter who you are to express the authentic you by combining your own intuition with logic and rationale. This book takes the fear out of making the wrong colour choices or getting it wrong. It shows how you can be in control of your own colour choices without the need to slavishly follow trend or copy others.

Per: The famous saxophone player Charlie Parker learned at very young age after failing at his first public performance, that is something called Key Signature – the set notes are played in order to create a piece of music. Is this the same with colours? Is that why some colours clash and feel completely out of tune, because they are not in the right key?

Yes, that’s right, intuition can just take you up to a certain point.  It’s not able to answer why, just what and then it’s up to the client or student to blindly trust the one with the intuition. To know the logic and innate relationship between colours is crucial if we aspire to have a much deeper understanding of the science of colour to create consistent, repeatable results. Using a colour out of harmony is like blaring a saxophone out of key, it’s just painful to listen to. Using colour out of harmony is just as painful for our senses and creates a dis-comfort and a dis-ease which is why I would feel comfortable in one café and not another.

In what way is your new book different from others?

This book is for the everyday person explaining in a very conversational way what colour actually is and why it has the impact it does and influences us how we think, feel and behave in so many different ways. The book also shows how you can bring colour into your everyday life from the clothes you wear and relationships, the colours in your home to your workplace. The book guides you in how you can connect back to your authentic self so that you can express who you really are no matter what the occasion or situation.

In what areas do you see colour is used without the structural knowledge and ‘just’ by intuition?

I find working with different companies that often the colours are arbitrary chosen for products and branding without there being any logic or rationale to back up their choices. Often colour choices are simply based on copying what everyone else is doing in the market, going against the norm or following the latest trend without fully understanding the impact the colours are having on their brand or the message it’s conveying to their ideal customers.

What are the greatest challenges for colour psychology?

Initially I was looking to write a book about Applied Colour Psychology for the designer industry however the response was “We use our intuition”. I found it interesting that design professionals are willingly to attend courses in lighting, materials etc but not when it came to building on their existing colour knowledge which typically was the colour wheel. From my many conversations it seemed there is a belief that “colour is something we already know”. Intuition is definitely one part. Having the science, logic and rationale is the other. So, I decided to change the audience I was writing for – if the designers didn’t want the book then I’ll share the knowledge with the everyday person so that they could use it.

So even though I wrote the book for the everyday person, I’ve been really surprised that the biggest uptake of the book has been the design industry. The response has been really positive with many saying it’s clarified many concepts for them, and they are now able to add the logic and rationale behind their colour decisions when speaking to their clients.

The former president of the British Institute of Interior Design (BIID), Susie Rumbold said, “This book is a fascinating introduction to the science of colour psychology and how to apply it. The power of colour to influence human behaviour is only just beginning to be fully understood and this book provides a wealth of information on how to improve lives by changing environments. A great tool for design professionals and interested amateurs as well.”

Where do you see (or want to see) colour psychology move in the next 10 years?

I want to create a colour revolution, a world-wide paradigm shift. To show that colours isn’t something we should be scared of or worried we are getting it wrong or feel we the need to follow trends or fashion. Instead how we can all use colour in a positive, conscious way to authentically express who we are and create spaces that we love, support and nurture us. That’s why I wrote this book.

 Thank you, Karen, for your time and work. As partners of Angela Wright’s teaching, we at Omuus also want to promote the same understanding of why and how colour affect our mind, emotions and influences our behaviours.

Download FREE first chapter
If you would like to download the first chapter of The Little Book of Colour for free then head over to The Little Book of Colour Free Chapter.

Buy The Little Book of Colour
If you would like to buy The Little Book of Colour – How to Use the Psychology of Colour to Transform your life then head over to The Little Book of Colour website.

We at Omuus have had an exciting winter. Our Shanghai office made a breakthrough on China market, with our two China Specialists Minna Qiang and Ruth Ng, along with Yone Lee! Thanks to these three, today OMUUS is a specialist agency also when it come to market specific design for China and South Korea market.

For some companies it is a challenge to enter the Asian market. Lucky for these companies, we have the knowledge and network to help them succeed. Today we talk with our CMF and China specialist Minna Qiang about entering Asian markets. This an introduction for one of our new productized services 7SEC. MARKET FOCUS©.

View offer.

COMMON CHALLENGES

How can I understand the local market and customers better?

Minna: The key to understand any market is research. It is important to tell the difference between a trend and a fad. Trends don’t appear and disappear yearly, they develop, mature and modulate. Your company needs to understand which trends are the ones you could benefit from in your product development.

To help our clients we paint the picture of consumer and design trends, competitor benchmarking and interpreted those information into crucial insights for clients’ business. Based on upcoming trends, we help clients to build their own brand and lead the market.

Maybe the most challenging part of entering Asian market is the language barrier. To get a seamless contact in any Asian market, it would be helpful to have a local onboard. Then your company would have the access to first-hand information from the local markets.

Can you help us to create product design suitable for Asian market?

Minna: Yes, sure. First, we can make sure that the design of your product is designed for the specific market. With the help of market study, local competition analyses and end user research, we make sure that your product has the right fit to the market. Secondly, we can help you to get in touch with local supplier network. We have a wide supplier network from our previous work history working for Nokia and Microsoft, that can speed the time to market with sourcing capable suppliers with scalable production.

THE SERVICE

Omuus 7SEC. MARKET FOCUS© helps to steer your brand through the key trends and market insights from Finland to Asian market. Our service provides you concrete tools to succeed in Asia market.

The service is suitable for companies suffering from market specific low sales or companies entering the market. For both B2C and B2B products. Tailored design and product quality are the key amongst networks to succeed in different markets. Our key local experts can provide you all of that to increase consumer appeal of your product.

If we got your interest, here you can find the full-service info and offer. We would love to help you to enter Asian market!