How does colour, material and finish (CMF) add value to a product?

There's significant discussion around the value of CMF in design and how it can define the success of products in market, particularly for the consumer sector. CMF is essential in shaping a user’s perception, experience, and emotional response to the design and building a deep emotional connection with your product.

Colour

Colour psychology plays a key role in drawing the target audience, with different hues evoking specific emotions, memories, and associations that align with brand identity and purpose.

Material

Material selection goes beyond mere appearance, directly affecting the product’s durability, environmental impact, and tactile quality. Each influences users' impressions of quality and value, enhancing overall satisfaction.

Finish

Whether matte, glossy, or textured, the finish adds another dimension by elevating visual appeal and introducing varied tactile interactions, deepening user engagement with the product.

When strategically combined, these aspects contribute to a cohesive product experience, boosting functionality and marketability and ultimately steering the product toward success in a competitive market. This is why it’s super important to give CMF its due attention and look beyond the products’ features and functions.

What is preventing the prioritisation of CMF design?

There are many potential hurdles between the designer and the final manufactured product that can dilute or, at worst, confuse the impact of CMF. So, what is the best way to ensure the design intent is being carried through to the final product?

Lack of CMF advocacy

The simple answer is to champion the CMF throughout the process. However, this isn’t always possible and will heavily rely on buy-in from all stakeholders. Importantly, you’ll also have to nominate the role of CMF champion within the team to be present and advocate for decisions at all key milestones. Ensure that you understand the motivations and drivers of all key stakeholders involved. You can be empathetic to their needs and deliver the CMF in a manner that the downstream stakeholders will be familiar with and adhere to. Otherwise, it will likely go off track.

Cost management

Outside of any internal components, the CMF can be one of the highest drivers of any product’s cost; by manipulating the specification of the finish or material, you adjust the cost of any product dramatically. This stage is usually driven by product management, with engineering and the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) managing the output. To steer the CMF, it's worth agreeing on a check-in with the team at this stage to ensure any proposed changes are handled as sympathetically as possible.

Priorities of design engineers and OEM tool designers

Design engineers and OEM tool design teams aim for mouldability and mass repeatability of parts and assemblies. If you specify a surface finish, have you ensured a sufficient draft to mould the texture? This is a basic requirement but often gets overlooked.

If you have specified a VDI, Mould Tech or Yick Sang texture, have you noted how much draft is required and if that angle is on the ‘A’ surfaces? Even if it is, will the tool makers ask for more draft than is specified to speed up the release and reduce defect rates? Are you able to influence the process at this point? If not, the surfaces or the selected texture may change to suit, most likely downstream by a production engineer, not a CMF designer.

Does the selected OEM use Yik Sing or MouldTech textures? Have they budgeted for acid etching the tool? This is often performed by an external third party and is costly in both time and money. Additionally, on occasion, some OEMs may just try to ‘match’ it with a cheaper alternative to save cost, dramatically changing the impact of the design.

Colour Sampling

Production engineers are keen to get repeatable, mouldable parts first and foremost, and this is the main priority before any colours will be trialled. This impacts the time for colour sampling and improvements, compressing this important stage. Creating colour plaques externally and sharing these with the OEM earlier in the process can incorporate more colour sampling and improvement time. We often do this at the quotation phase (RFQ), so it's dialled into the OEM's thinking and considered early on.

Document Control

Treat the CMF as a working document with clear specifications and revision control in the same way you would an engineering drawing. Managing any changes through the development process is key. The last thing you need is for the toolmaker or packaging team to be using an old issue of the CMF.

The best way to ensure the CMF intent is carried through is to engage with key stakeholders as early as possible to run through your design and build in all feedback. Importantly, your CMF should be a working document with issue control - think of it as an engineering drawing for colour material and finish. In the same way as a critical to quality (CTQ) drawing, it should control the exact specification of all components and lead with clear revision control so any updates are not missed.

Summary: Ways to ensure CMF design intent reaches production

In short, we at OPD believe that CMF is a great and sometimes underappreciated way to add value to products. Here is how we aim to ensure CMF design intent reaches the hands of the end user.

• We encourage the allocation of a CMF champion on projects to ensure the CMF design intent is understood and carried through development stages.
• We have great team and supplier relationships and check in with all parties to ensure any necessary changes are sympathetic to the original design.
• OPD factors in the priorities of others, including design engineers and tool designers, to ensure that the CMF design of parts enables mouldability and repeatability at scale relevant to the project.
• We ensure the project team and our clients are aware of possible additional time or alternative processes for sampling parts' colours and aim to add them at the quotation stage of a project for budgeting.
• OPD treats CMF the same way as you would with other aspects of product design, with a working document and revision control to prevent decisions that disregard the CMF design intent.

What are your thoughts on the role of CMF in product design? Get in touch if you would like to learn more about our approach at OPD.