COLORS OF OUR TIME – Identity and Difference in Design

28.11.2025 – 07.02.2026 | designforum Wien

Colours not only characterise well-known brands, they also provide information about our lifestyle and culture. Colours give us and our world an identity that connects us with others or distinguishes us from them. 
In industrial and product design, colour design is important for brand perception and product use. 

Colour is a design factor that gives products an aesthetic quality beyond their form and function and gives brands a distinctive identity. Although many brand colours came about rather by chance, the recurring use of characteristic colours in design and advertising has shaped our consumer culture, as the examples of Manner pink and Nivea blue show.

The first focus of the exhibition at designforum Wien highlights the importance of colours for companies and consumers. Colours can shape brands, symbolise their values and convey the quality of products. 

A second focus is on colour worlds through the ages – from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. This section of the exhibition illustrates how each generation has its own colour world, in which it grows up as a matter of course and which it shares with those who grew up at the same time under comparable social and cultural conditions. 
Beyond fashion trends, design reveals which colours have shaped our culture and society at a particular time. The different colours of objects from these periods reflect our perceptions and our identity. While, for example, the primary colours blue, red and yellow were the defining colours of the Bauhaus at the beginning of the last century, today's product and living environments once again feature many pastel colours reminiscent of the 1950s. They are an expression of a search for orientation and identity in a world that is changing and in which questions of diversity and identity are more relevant than ever. In design, this development is reflected in the colour trends of a wide variety of products. The subtle colours of loudspeakers and headphones are also found in the design of cameras and office chairs. Pastel-coloured objects can also be found in the home and bathroom, reflecting our times, our perceptions and our identity.

Concept and curation
Burkhard Jacob, Red Dot Institute

In cooperation with the Red Dot Design Museum.

Photo: © Red Dot Design Museum