Introducing RAL E3 and E4 Fan Decks
 
St. Augustin, March 2010. RAL extends its product portfolio by two new easy-to-use fan decks containing the RAL EFFECT color collection. The RAL E3 and RAL E4 fan decks provide a quick overview of the collection that has been specifically designed for industrial colour design and include, as a special feature, 70 metallic colours in addition to 420 solid colours. 

The RAL E3 colour fan deck displays the 490 RAL EFFECT colours arranged in 70 colour families, including the metallic colours. Each page shows six solid colours and the matching metallic colour whereas the RAL E4 colour fan deck provides a full-page display of the 70 metallic shades. The colours of the RAL EFFECT collection are produced according to modern and simple recipes using only very few pigments, thus allowing a cost-effective production. The colours are based on waterborne paint systems, thereby meeting the growing demands for environmentally friendly colours.

So far, RAL offers the EFFECT collection as primary standards (RAL E1), as single sheets and as a practical double fan deck allowing the user to view both the solid and the metallic colours side by side (RAL E2). Given the great success the RAL EFFECT collection has not only in Germany but also, and in particular, in other European countries and in Asia RAL has decided to extend the RAL EFFECT portfolio.
   RAL E4 Fan Deck
 
 
March 19th, 2010
Intorducing "The Color Dictionary"
 
The ten colour-analytical chapters were developed with the intention to create a tremendously stimulating overview of characteristics of style and trend worlds, sentiments and feelings, functional and factual worlds, impressions of value, psychological sensitivities etc.

For us it was no question of the selectivity of terms, because language is simultaneously playful, absurd, intricate, ambiguous, polyphonic, but also profound, elegant and it can be explicit as well as suggestive.

In areas where it seemed advisable to us, we selected polarising terms. In some cases this could only be achieved with certain vagueness because of the subject matter or necessary economic limitations. The fi gures behind the letter pair illustrate the polarity, as for example “A 03 – modern“ against “B 03 – old German”.
 
Equally significant as the contrariness of word meanings is the colored and formal distinction to words sounding quite similar: What we understand by “grand”, “luxurious“ or “exotic“, is miles apart when considering color spectrum aspects. Therefore this analysis also helps considering with more differentiation what has previously been vague.

The odd pages feature the 49 colored word meanings of those partaking in the colors-and-signs experiment. These were put in a chromatic order. Subsequently every single color drawing and with it the entire color field was analyzed and translated into RAL color values. This resulted in a
quantity analysis of hues, which is weighted in the pie chart according to their percentage. The bar chart below presents an analytic-chromatic experience, which was translated into the adjacent RAL values. Consequently, verification of color values independent of the print is ensured.
 
The merely semantic interpretation required a semiotic addition in order to achieve a well rounded overall picture. The four drawings each presented with their gray-scale values convey prototypical impressions of the conclusively presented design characteristics of a term.
 
The “thumbprint” of the respective color term, which has some kind of compass function for the reader when browsing through the book, is located on the right side of odd pages.