Designers witness art and science mixed into colorful array of plastic products

Industrial Designers Society of America members tour the Bayer MaterialScience Design Center in Newark, OH. The tour included a journey through a design gallery filled with innovative applications using high-tech thermoplastics.

More than 80 members of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) toured the Bayer MaterialScience (BMS) Design Center of Bayer’s Color Competency Center at its Newark, OH, plastics compounding facility April 11. The tour was offered to IDSA members in conjunction with the IDSA Mideast District Annual Conference held in Columbus, OH, April 11-13, 2008.

The BMS Design Center, which opened in June 2007, brings ideas utilizing BMS’ LEDA® compounded color technology to life. LEDA compounded resin technology is one of five Fantasia® color and special effect technologies. LEDA compounded color technology adds colorants and special effect additives right in the plastic pellet to yield molded-in colors and effects, including metallic, sparkle, shimmer, pearlescence and glow-in-the-dark.

The Design Center offers customers a hands-on experience and encourages them to be actively involved in the design process. Customers work hand-in-hand with dedicated BMS personnel as they create precise color matches and select special effects to meet their product design needs within a matter of hours rather than days or weeks.

The tour offered the IDSA visitors a similar experience. With Bayer’s material experts as guides, they toured the center’s design gallery filled with innovative applications using high-tech thermoplastics, watched custom color mixing using BMS’ proprietary AURA® infusion technology process, and saw actual injection molding of sample parts, a first-time experience for many of the designers.

IDSA members learn about Bayer MaterialScience’s proprietary AURA® infusion technology process during a tour of Bayer’s Design Center.

“Attending the tour was a valuable learning experience for IDSA members, comprising a mix of professional industrial designers and design students,” says Frank

Tyneski, executive director, Industrial Designers Society of America. “Bayer demonstrated a sincere interest and commitment to understanding what design and color mean in the product development process and, in turn, was able to glean important feedback and insights directly from the visiting designers – many of whom are likely to source Bayer's materials.”

Michael George, site laboratory manager, BMS, echoed Tyneski’s comments. “We were pleased with everyone’s interest in the color and technology selection process and had several meaningful discussions about product design and future trends,” says George.

The BMS Color Competence Center is one of a global network of similar active or planned facilities in Italy, India, China and Thailand.