Style ·03.04.2024
Concept to Creation: Colours
Landing on a colour is one of the most pivotal decisions we make when designing a new product. Over the years we’ve worked hard to curate a distinct palette that you, our customers, can recognise as synonymous with Carl Friedrik. Broadly speaking, we take a fairly understated approach to colour because we believe this suits your work-leisure flow best, offering maximum versatility.
Nonetheless, there are nuances between the colours used in our respective bag and luggage ranges, which we’ll elaborate on in detail. But before we do, first let’s take a look at the process of selecting colours.
Ideation
We start, rather conventionally, with a brief. Who is the product aimed at? What is the use case? In what environment will they use it? A new cabin case targeted at the jet-setting leisure traveller will naturally have a different colour profile to a sleek briefcase intended for business use.
Casting the net fairly wide, we then draw inspiration from travel destinations, landscapes and interiors. That could be the Cyclades or Lisbon, down to hotels, train stations or public buildings with inspiring decor. It goes without saying that luggage and bags travel with you, so we’ll always think about the product in situ: for example, how does a suitcase work in a hotel room or airport lobby?
Another consideration is how the proposed colours fit into the existing collection. Is it a harmonious combination? Are they in keeping with our brand identity? Fluorescent purple is a non-starter here, whereas a chestnut brown might just have legs.
Conception
Once a few directions have been established, we create digital mood boards to pair inspiration images with swatches of similar colours. For example, if the rocky, terracotta-like terrain of southern Spain is the inspiration, we overlay a handful of yellow-orange Pantones.
Our Design team then takes the chosen colours and applies them to the product using innovative software programmes, allowing us to visualise the effect better, saving time, cost and resourcing in the sampling phase.
We also place the individual colours together to see how well they work together as a collective. So if customers want to buy multiple products from the same range, they will fit together seamlessly, both visually and functionally.
Decision
After we’ve locked in the colours, we get in touch with our material supplier to start working on lab dip swatches. They will prepare a few variations of the Pantone we provided, so we can decide which looks best on the leather or fabric in question. It’s hard to predict how colour translates digitally to physically, so it’s best to overcompensate here.
The Design team then has a final design meeting to agree on colour. At this stage, we’re ready for the factory to start creating final production samples.
Heritage
Now let's take a closer look at the colours of our bag and luggage ranges. To a certain degree, the colours in the Heritage range are dictated by the vegetable-tanning process which the leather undergoes. This form of tanning (turning animal hides into finished leather) relies on natural tannins found in organic sources like wood, leaves and plants.
Vegetable-tanned leather is somewhat limited when it comes to dyeing: it takes better to rich and earthy colours, as opposed to vivid ones. Hence the bags in the Heritage collection have a fairly natural feel to them, with black, chocolate, cognac and navy as the primary colours.
The colours we achieve with natural leather are also down to the generations worth of expertise that our specialist Italian tannery possesses, along with the high-grade skins that we source from European hides. Heritage’s traditional colour palette is versatile but particularly well-suited to formal environments, like the office. It seamlessly complements smart attire, adding a touch of sartorial flair to proceedings.
Our latest colour is Midnight Green, which offers a subtle elegance that’s in keeping with the Heritage range, albeit deeper and a bit braver. Midnight Green shows that non-traditional colours (green) can work in a formal work setting if the shade is just right.
Move
Move bags are positioned more towards digital nomads: travel-savvy workers who visit multiple destinations each month for shorter periods of time. You’re probably more likely to find one in a co-working space than the boardroom. From material to colour, Move bags have a slightly more relaxed identity. The muted Autumnal palette — spanning black, charcoal, grey and olive — has a calming effect to it.
City-hopper Backpack
This muted quality also gives Move bags a more contemporary feel when compared with the Heritage range. This makes sense if you consider that the on-the-go urban professional is a fairly recent innovation. We see the nylon bags in the Move collection as an opportunity to explore new and bolder colours, while still ensuring they meet our customers’ needs.
Hybrid
The metallic look and feel of our Hybrid suitcases hark back to the Golden Age of Aviation, from which the designs are inspired. Gun-metal grey gives connotations of vintage aircraft jetliners (see the de Havilland Comet); an idea that’s reinforced visually with the clean-lined panel detailing seen on all Hybrid travel cases.
The overall effect is sleek, clean and semi-industrial, making Hybrid suitcases feel like mini feats of engineering in their own right. We’re also big on heroing raw materials, hence the high-quality aluminium frame is a notable feature of all Hybrid luggage.
Of course, each design is softened — and elevated — with Italian leather detailing. These are the colours used in the Heritage collection and they bring a degree of timelessness to the finished article.
The outlying colour variant is all-black, which we first released in 2023. Inspired by the beauty of shadow-soaked cities, all-black offers monochromatic elegance and a slightly more contemporary feel. It’s inherently versatile and has quickly become a bestseller.
What's next?
We’re experimenting with several new colours across different product ranges, with many set to be released over the rest of 2024, but the team are also looking as far ahead as 2025-26. Keep your eyes peeled for the latest drops.
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