On the Community, we often discuss the interior workings and technologies of a product, but we rarely explore its exterior – the design.

CMF is the field of design that centres on defining the colour (C), material (M) and finish (F) of a product’s exterior. Our designers work hard to really move people though these elements, conducting field research all around the world, using those findings every year to create a ‘CMF Framework’ that identifies upcoming trends.

Here, we look at the process behind the 2019 edition.

How do designers create the CMF Framework?

CMF determines the first impression a product makes. It has emotional value for users. However, this value hugely depends on context and social background; a colour or material that looks elegant in one setting can come off poorly in another.

Sony’s Design Vision Project is an annual project to comprehensively research worldwide trends, and our CMF-specific research delves deeper into the psychology to understand how people all over the world feel right now. Our designers travel to the actual locations, gaining real, first-hand experience – we call it the ‘City Safari’.

The CMF Framework itself consists of keywords, visuals, colour and sample materials that foresee what could lie ahead.

From Shanghai to London to New York

In 2019, the project members broke into three teams, exploring three cities, and conducting their field research.

In Shanghai, they found the youth were re-examining the value of the traditions they were seeped in, with a lot of people embracing the dynamic fusion of traditional and ultra-modern. In London at this time, Brexit had made tensions high, and many people were yearning for interpersonal bonds and community connections. And in New York, there was real environmental awareness, with emphasis on finding the beauty in the unpolished and unfinished.

After exploring the cities, the team reassembled in Tokyo, using all their experiences as ingredients to create fuller, truer insights that would ultimately form the CMF Framework. The team thought through everything, from materials and colour palettes, to wording and visuals, enlisting input from different departments too.

The CMF Framework is ever evolving

We’ve already started working on next year’s project, but it’s not about switching tracks when a trend begins to lose steam. The CMF Framework grows and deepens as society evolves and new technologies are developed, serving as a thematic for Sony Design as a whole and constantly creating fresh emotional value for the future.

This article has been adapted from a piece on Sony.net. The original can be found here: https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/design/stories/cmf/