For paint and coatings companies, the selection of its Colors of the Year is a highlight of their year. That choice is not made simply on a whim; there is a lot of effort and thought behind these selections.

For 2023, Mankiewicz, a coatings specialist focused on the industrial, aviation and automotive markets, has highlighted three colors: Fée Dragée, Oyster Mushroom and Under Leaves. In choosing these colors, Mankiewicz’s international design has chosen colors that have a noticeably “feel good” flavor.

In announcing its Colors of the Year selections, Mankiewicz notes that La Fée Dragée is French for the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky, with a color shade that is similar to the fairy’s pink ballet tutu. Oyster Mushroom is a neutral, slightly grayish shade of brown that is found in the shells of snails, tree bark and animal furs. Under Leaves is a green can appear slightly bluish when next to plants and offers sense of depth and tranquility.

Nina Karsten, senior designer for Mankiewicz, said that color shades are intended as inspiration rather than a specific proposal.

“They are primarily meant for the individual environment surrounding a person – therefore, for the design of interiors and for surfaces,” Karsten observed. “Fee Dragée is a friendly, fresh shade, optimistic and light. Oyster Mushroom creates more of a sympathetic mood, has something calm and uncomplicated. Green is always a proof of unapologetic liveliness. We think with these three we have made a coherent yet comprehensible and hopefully inspiring choice.”

In making its choices of colors, Karsten noted that Mankiewicz has an international design team that is constantly in search for new trends or design-relevant topics.

“With the selection of the Colors of the Year, we try to capture current developments and illustrate them with corresponding colors,” said Karsten. “This is intended to be food for thought, a possible way to loosely structure the ideas and themes that generate new trends.”

“It is not a matter of certain colors being in vogue or not,” Karsten added. “Instead, it is about what we can read from the present zeitgeist. How do we illustrate these thoughts with appropriate colors? Certainly not by making something up but rather through identification and interpretation.”

Karsten pointed out that searching for trends is not a sports event in which one achieves better results by training intensively and ahead of time.

“It is important to constantly observe and take note of cultural and social trends, political incidences, perceptible influences of all kinds and to recognize them, evaluate them in regard to their relevance as well as to interpret them,” she added. “This means, the closer the year for which a color is chosen gets, the more predictable the relevance of individual topics.

“So, casually put, the rule of thumb is: The later, the better. Without having seen the trade shows in the first half of a year, without public discussions, we don’t think about the new Colors of the Year. Perhaps even the opposite is true: Sometimes it is quite good to also gain again some distance to a topic,” Karsten concluded.

Not surprisingly, the pandemic has been the defining trend in recent years, but there also needs to be a sense of escapism.

“Trend prognoses as we knew it up to now had already been affected by the pandemic,” Karsten said. “Trade shows being cancelled one by one, the monstrous topic of sustainability, and finally also politically unthinkable distortions and supply shortages. All this has made classic trend scouting ponderous and has changed it.

“But this ponderousness must also be accepted as it is also part of the common emotional state,” Karsten continued. “Escaping the heaviness through fantasy worlds, the desire to live in harmony with nature again or to focus on sustainability in product worlds are topics that correspond with current perceptions and do not counteract them. That is why we have chosen the colors and their content-related background in the way we did.”