Sensorial decoration and design
“Constantly improve the perceived quality of your products"
Pour plus de renseignements, contactez-nous.■ Improving perceived quality has become a priority in many sectors and a decisive factor of competitiveness for industrial companies. Cost reduction (by getting rid of over-quality, in particular) and the embellishment of visible parts (vehicle interiors, bodywork colour and design, mobile telephone cases or bathroom cabinets) is all the rage. Manufacturing processes have to be standardised while products have to be made to stand out: in the automobile sector, although several vehicles are made on the same platforms (chassis, engines, etc.), interior and exterior design have become decisive purchasing criteria. To customise the vehicle, each one has to be made to enhance its forms and concept.
■ The emotional aspect related to buying a car is also true in other luxury products or even in more everyday products. Disposable lighters are now decorated in different colours and on perfume bottles, the plastic caps have been replaced with metal.
■ Design departments, designers and suppliers involved in all product design phases have to double their vigilance and creativity to satisfy consumers by proposing new concepts and decors. Style and design studios are enthusiastic about tactile, olfactory and colourful sensations, sensual or rustic contact and more oneiric evocations.
■ Traditional decoration processes have been shaken with the arrival of new, more inventive and more reliable technologies. Flat decors have become 3D, and holographic and interferential effects are used.
■ All shapes are possible with thermo-plastics, due to their suitability of use in a diversity of decorations, whether organic or metallic. Polymers demonstrate their best possibilities with organic coatings; these are making the impossible possible in terms of decoration.
■ Available techniques are many and are constantly evolving: superficial modification, physical treatments (etching, laser, inkjet, ablation, UV etching), the creation of optical and visual effects (absorbent colorants, holographs, modifying optical loads), organic coatings (varnishes, lacquers, metallisation), and the application of images (offset, screen-printing, pad printing, Cubic 3D, 3D Sublimation).
■ The commercial implications of successful decoration and finishing are vital in the fields of perfume, cosmetics, automobile, telephony, IT, household electrical appliances, packaging, construction and sport.
■ In a constantly evolving technical field, Innovation 128 proposes a Technological Watch Programme, TechWatch, which enables developers to imagine their new decors and industrial managers to be informed of their degree of maturity and cost of implementation.
Main themes
■ Décor processes
- Visual optical effects
- Organic paints and coatings
- The metallisation of plastics
- Image application
- Superficial modification
- Modification by physical treatments
■ Sensorial design
- Visual perceptions
- Tactile perceptions
- Auditory perceptions
- Olfactory perceptions
■ Applications, markets and feedback
- Packaging
- Automobile
- Luxury goods
- Household electrical appliances
- Telephony, IT and other
- Housing and construction
- Sports and Leisure
- Paints and coatings (market data)
■ Pollution control, hygiene and safety
- Treatment of components
- Clean technologies
- Norms and regulations