“Everything can be an inspiration”
Red, black or blue? For many motorists, choosing the colour of their car is a serious business. As it should be, says #sandrahonerzubentrup, colour and material designer at #mazda Research Europe. In this interview, she explains what vehicle colours reveal about their owners, how trends can be a blessing and a curse, and why curiosity is the key to colour #design.
You started at #mazda as a Colour and Material Designer in 2012. What has changed since then?
A lot, actually. For one thing, the profile of interior #design and colour and trim has risen a great deal. It used to be all about exterior #design, but when you think about it, we spend a lot more time inside our cars than we do admiring them from the outside.
I think over the last few years, people have started to recognise how all areas of #design work together to create a truly coherent and beautiful object. The way that shape and colour interact and influence each other – a central insight for our Kodo #design language – was not as widely acknowledged a decade ago.
In interior #design, the degree of individualisation has increased dramatically. Usually, interior #design packages include a low-grade, a mid-grade and a high-grade option.
With the MX-30¹, for example, we offer two completely different higher-grade interior styles related more to lifestyle tastes than technical features. This is an approach that gives the customer more leeway to express their own personal taste.
