Muenster / Munich. The annual Global Trend Book of BASF, which targets the designers of the automotive manufacturers, allows to experience color and paint. BASF has now received the iF communication design award for the design of its Global Trend Book. The award is organized by the International Forum Design and is one of the most accepted international design competitions.

Wide Awake , the current edition of the Global Trend Book, not only convinced the customers from the automotive industry, but also won over the design jury. It was designed in collaboration with the Cologne design agency Are We Designer.

Every year, BASF publishes a trend book exclusively for automotive customers. The publication focuses on both global and regional color topics. It serves as a tool for the automotive designers, offering both information and inspiration. The trend book describes the social movements and developments researched by the designers. The color trends based on these findings are visualized in the trend book with originally coated color samples.   

“The iF design award is one of the most important design prizes, making it a significant distinction for our work,” said Mark Gutjahr, designer at BASF Coatings. The iF design award is the second design prize for BASF’s innovative customer communications tool after winning a red dot award in 2012. In addition, in 2011, the color innovators were winners in the Automotive Brand Contest with the XFine® metallic special-effect paint and also won the Materialica Design & Technology Award in the surface and technology category.

2013 iF communication design award
For the 2013 iF design awards, 49 international experts discussed more than 4,000 entries from around 2,000 participants from 50-odd countries. With Wide Awake, BASF received the communication design award in the category “Print Media – advertising media”. The evaluation criteria include target group language and content, design quality and creativity, choice of material and processing, as well as economic efficiency and customer relevance. The iF design awards night was held at BMW World in Munich.