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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.

“Cities are a collection of many things: of memory, of desires, of signs of a language; cities are places of exchange, as all the books of economic history explain, but these exchanges are not only exchanges of goods, they are exchanges of words, desires, memories.” These words, written by Italo Calvino in his novel ‘Invisible Cities’ (1972), illustrate the fascination we have to the towns we live in every day and to those we are just passing through. Travelling through an urban context means immersing oneself in ancient and/or modern environments, imagining how they are perceived by their inhabitants, fantasising about how they might have been in the past and how they will be in the future, weighing up their many facets at various times of the day. These aspects fascinate us the most and remain imprinted on our memory like indelible postcards of those cities. The Merck Group, one of the leading experts in the development of special-effect pigments for the most unusual colour results, has focussed precisely on such fascination to develop its new City Lights tool for powder coatings formulators. “It is the first tool specifically designed and developed for the powder coating industry,” states Stefano Corrado, Coatings Account Manager at Merck. “It was inspired by six modern cities with the most fascinating urban contexts and it aims at reproducing their colour nuances at the most evocative times of day, that is, from dusk to dawn. City Lights

brings to life the play of light and shadow in the nights of New York, Chicago, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Vancouver, and Vienna. We have created twenty-eight new colours for this toolbox: we have selected seven special-effect pigments from our product series Xirallic® NXT, Pyrisma®, and Colorstream® and created an “urban colour story” for each one of them. Through four colour shades, i.e. two RAL blacks and two RAL tints, each special-effect pigment can show its full potential and what fascinating, variable, and surprising colours it allows creating. Just as light changes the appearance of our cities over the course of the day, so our pigments can bring new qualities to classic colours.”

Beyond tradition

Merck’s new toolbox is the result of this well-established German company’s experience in developing the most innovative colour trends, combined with the feedback received from the market. “The City Lights tool was designed to provide support in colour selection,” says Corrado, “exactly like traditional colour catalogues, but with an innovative approach, which is its added value. Our team developed this solution in this particular moment in history because it is precisely now that our customers are looking for new, special elements that can provide aesthetic effects breaking with the patterns of the past. It is a tool designed to be used in an easy and intuitive way by both paint formulators and creative professionals, that is, designers or architects, who need to select a particular finish to present to their stakeholders. “Each plate in the box features a colour sample on one side and a detailed description of the special effect pigments chosen to produce it on the other, thus providing a ready-to-use formulation, as well as a description of the colour, the history behind its formulation, and the explanation of its name. In fact, we wanted to offer a double value: on the one hand, a description specifically conceived for creatives that explains the sources of inspiration for each tint and, on the other hand, a technical sheet that illustrates the complete formulation and a sample of all colours. It is therefore also a comprehensive tool for those involved in research and development, such as laboratory technicians, and for those studying the colour effects of paints.”

Surprising colours

“The City Lights tool’s colours,” indicates Laura Zanini, Merck’s Decoratives&Industrials Account Manager, “have been created using mainly new-generation pigments, such as Xirallic NXT, in simple paint formulations or added to those specifically designed for special effects. Our tool allows analysing on the one hand the degree of gloss and on the other hand the aesthetic results obtained by the interplay of colours. Each pigment is applied in different percentages and the effect within the different colour areas is analysed. One of the most popular effects among our customers is Amur Black, inspired by the city of Copenhagen. Here, the colours of the night can fade into deep dark blue or anthracite grey, and it is this changing effect that fascinates our interlocutors the most. The same is true for the titanium oxide-based pigments of the Pyrisma series, which impress with their ability to range from a glossier to a more matte texture. These effects have been very well received not only in the architectural and automotive sectors, which are the target industries for Merck’s products, but also in the coil coating field, which has seen an increase in demand for the multicolour pigments of the Colorstream series, especially in the last two years.

Italo Calvino also wrote in his novel, “You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.” Thanks to its in-depth research study, the Merck team has been able to identify the most original shades of colour in each city, not simply linking them to their

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