Duotone DRIVEN Magazine No.04

ALASKA INSIDE DUOTONE KITE DESIGN Design, like innovation, performance, and quality, is firmly anchored in the Duotone brand values. Duotone Creative Director Florian Panther describes how the Duotone Kite design is created. Colors We first ask ourselves what colors should be in the new kite collection? As designers, we do extensive color research and look at various other areas: Outdoor, winter sports, biking, skateboarding, and all activities across the board. Also, we use publications like Trendbooks and Trendcolours. I look to fashion as it is way ahead of anything else and allows us to predict color trends for the outdoor and action sports industry. In addition, I particularly like to get inspiration from nature: a great purple found on a flower can be quite unique. In the next step, we throw all those pieces of information together and check: Does it result in something exciting? We take the basic theory of color into account. What works together harmoniously? Plus, there are watersport-specific requirements: The natural color trend in snowboarding, freeskiing, and outdoor, for example, that started a few years ago with earthy tones, brown, curry, green, for example, was cool but doesn’t work so well on the beach. In kite design, you need a certain saturation and power of color. At the beach and on the water, you usually have glistening sunlight and blue water. In these lighting conditions, any color evaporates: a neon pink that looks way too garish when viewed in the office might appear just perfect on the beach. After that, we create color combinations: A two to three color combination in the Canopy seems ideal. After all, our name Duotone means “two-colored”. We then look at the Dacrons, reinforcement materials, small parts, and yarns. In total, we design our kites with about six to seven canopy colors per season. Of course, we pay attention to the colors we are using in the current collection. We usually carry over two or three colors into the next year to ensure continuity and corporate identity. Outstanding and non-conformal colors are important to me: rather a coral red or burgundy instead of the classic Ferrari red. We’ve been going for desaturated shades for a while. Our current coral, mint, and yellow are all toned down a bit. That has been a large part of the trend over the last few years. But now, after Covid and all the lockdowns, there is a very strong energy in action sports with a basic feeling of “I can get out and travel again”. This need calls for new colors reflecting this attitude in a fresh new look! So in 2024, we include three new bright strong colors in our range that exude that energy: Reflex Blue, a kind of ultramarine blue, a cracking orange, and a Tennis ball Lime. And we’re combining them beautifully with our existing colors.