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City Lights in Merck’s New Powder Coatings with Special-Effect Pigments From an interview with Laura Zanini and Stefano Corrado Merck Group - Darmstadt, Germany
service@merckgroup.com
Merck has recently presented City Lights, the first special-effect pigments toolbox specially developed for powder coatings formulators. This was inspired by the lights and shadows of modern urban settings, made even more fascinating by the colours of the night.
“C
ities are a collection of many things: of memory, of desires,
the day. These aspects fascinate us the most and remain imprinted
of signs of a language; cities are places of exchange, as all
on our memory like indelible postcards of those cities. The Merck
the books of economic history explain, but these exchanges
Group, one of the leading experts in the development of special-effect
are not only exchanges of goods, they are exchanges of words, desires,
pigments for the most unusual colour results, has focussed precisely
memories.” These words, written by Italo Calvino in his novel ‘Invisible
on such fascination to develop its new City Lights tool for powder
Cities’ (1972), illustrate the fascination we have to the towns we live in
coatings formulators.
every day and to those we are just passing through. Travelling through
“It is the first tool specifically designed and developed for the powder
an urban context means immersing oneself in ancient and/or modern
coating industry,” states Stefano Corrado, Coatings Account Manager
environments, imagining how they are perceived by their inhabitants,
at Merck. “It was inspired by six modern cities with the most fascinating
fantasising about how they might have been in the past and how they
urban contexts and it aims at reproducing their colour nuances at the
will be in the future, weighing up their many facets at various times of
most evocative times of day, that is, from dusk to dawn. City Lights
18
N. 73 - JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022 - international PAINT&COATING magazine
