MÜNSTER, Germany - Getting more color on the roads is the goal of BASF’s Coatings division. In its annual global trend book, BASF presents the color areas that will play a role in the automotive industry in the future. The current edition, entitled “Under the Radar,” has been honored with the iF Design Award.

The trend book is published exclusively for the automotive manufacturers’ designers, and encompasses global and regional color topics based on observations of social trends and developments. It serves both as a presentation tool and a source of inspiration. Color samples coated with original paint reflect the trends, which are communicated through imagery appearing throughout the book as a common theme.

Astrid Van der Auwera, Global Design Manager at BASF Coatings, commented, “Predicting trends and making colors visible is a huge challenge. For this reason, the global trend book’s visual and haptic quality is very important to us. It is at the heart of our customer communications. We feel that this distinction by the iF’s international jury of experts has confirmed our design and color competence.”

BASF Coatings’ designer Mark Gutjahr added, “The award for ‘Under the Radar’ demonstrates that we are able to convince both our customers and a design jury and convey color trends in an innovative manner.” Since October, the trend book is already among the laureates of the Red Dot Award: Communication Design. With the iF Design Award, BASF is once again successfully represented among two prestigious international design competitions.

Nearly 5,000 submissions from 53 countries were registered for this year’s iF Design Award. A high-ranking jury of experts presented the award to BASF and the agency Raum Mannheim for “Under the Radar” in the communication design discipline the end of February.