Introduction to CMF
An obligatory and very simplified overview of CMF design.
What is CMF?
C-M-F: for the few who know, the acronym stands for “color, material, and finish”. CMF is a specialty in the field of industrial design – a practice of designing the material characteristics of physical products. In the world of hardware engineering and design, CMF design is needed to give products the tangible, sensorial experiences required to make them accessible and usable to the end user.
Such products, as you might see in the world of industrial design, include everyday objects such as vacuum cleaners, kitchen tools, and tech devices. They can also include larger scale products such as cars, exercise equipment, and furniture. Whatever the product, each of these requires colors, materials, and surface finishes to be specified, in order to create the type of experience that is appropriate for that product and/or desired by the end user.
Why is CMF Design important?
In today’s world of digital retail and online-first experiences, does CMF Design still matter?
In a word: yes.
Here are some of the benefits that a product can get from having well designed CMF:
Provide visual guidance on how to use the product
Improve product experience and sequence of actions needed to use or operate a product
Foster practical and emotional relationships with the user
Signal differentiation from competitor products
Attract the right audience for the product
This blender’s color palette focuses the user’s attention on the highly-contrasted power button, highlighting it as a safety feature and as an important first step in operating the product.
In other words, CMF design can improve nearly every element of a product.
This obviously includes the built product itself, but CMF design also comes into play when creating:
Marketing videos and imagery of the product
Advertisements
Packaging for the product
Product retail space
Written or verbal descriptions of the product
CMF design can play a large role not only in the product itself, but also in its packaging. CMF design on packaging can shape the user’s first interactions with the brand and product. What does this packaging design communicate to you about the headphones?
What does a CMF designer do?
Needless to say, a CMF designer spends most of their day researching, exploring and designing colors, materials, and finishes for products. However, there’s more to a CMF designer’s job than selecting color and material swatches to create moodboards.
In fact, experienced CMF designers spend significant amounts of time understanding the scope of the project and learning about the target audience. They also invest time in understanding how the product they’re creating can improve on previous or current product experiences.
If you’re designing CMF for your own product, then you probably already know what it is, how it works, and how it compares to the competition. Your job, then, is to learn about your end user’s lifestyle, practical needs, emotional desires, and personal preferences – how would these translate into a great product experience, in their opinion? Once you understand this, you can design CMF that speaks to them.
A classic example of an enduring design: Fiskars scissors have become timeless for its versatility and quality. Take a closer look at its CMF details that contribute to a robust and reliable experience.
Plastic handles: textured for a gritty, tactile feel; matte finish to support good grip while using the scissors; bright color that stands out from its environment.
Stainless steel blades: smooth, brushed finish for frictionless, precise cutting.
How to become a CMF designer
At the present moment, there are few schools and educational resources that offer formal training in CMF design. What can help, though, are the following skills:
Understanding of the industrial design process
Understanding of manufacturing and material fabrication processes
Good sense of compelling and desirable color and material palettes
Storytelling supported by inspirational visuals, benchmark products, research on relevant trends influencing a given project
Strong communication and logic to connect design choices to user needs
We should emphasize that becoming a good CMF designer takes time, much like it takes time to become a good industrial designer. But with CMF design, the better you are at it, the more compelling your products will be and the stronger you are as an industrial designer.
Having solid CMF design skills is not necessarily a requirement for industrial design roles, but demonstrating you have that skill set will absolutely give you an edge and stand out from the average industrial designer.
This is a brief overview of CMF design and what it takes to become a designer in this field.
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