BASF: advert-body-1 by foam Studio

Visual trend lab Foam Studio embarked on a prolific exploration of trend visuals with BASF’s Coating Division. Their Automotive Colour Design team invited Foam to conceptualize and design the latest release of their global design tool kit, which is an authoritative trend book on automotive paints for the next few years.

The collaboration started with an intensive workshop during which the individual global design teams of the corporation met and discussed their findings. Foam’s task was to interpret the diverse findings of the group, and consolidate the complex social, technological and aesthetic trends and translate them into formal narratives. After an extensive phase of research and development, the studio under art director Jamie Raap, visualized these global trend relations as a terrain of unexpected allure that expands between a boundless sculpture garden and virtual reality stage set.

A vital part of the project was to translate the different coating colours into shapes that would visualize what the paint would look like applied to scale and at the same time embody the inherent characteristics of the design thinking behind the colour development. This project lined up three of the studio’s main focus areas in one exciting and unusual project: future material trends, automotive/mobility and poetic expression of shape.

The result is an unseen formal language, with autonomous shapes and unfamiliar materials celebrated in a playful ménage of bold hyperrealism and poetic abstraction.