10 × 10 by Studio RENS

When Wolf-Gor­don planned to intro­duce a refreshed col­or palette for its Scuff­mas­ter^® brand of paint fin­ish­es, CCO Mary­beth Shaw sought a research-dri­ven approach. After ana­lyz­ing Scuffmaster’s exist­ing cat­a­log, Shaw turned to pow­er­house design firm Stu­dio RENS to devel­op a frame­work that com­bined best­selling col­ors and fin­ish­es with excit­ing new con­cept col­ors. The result­ing col­lec­tion, pre­sent­ed in a 10 × 10 for­mat, lives at the junc­ture between research and design.

To pre­pare for the relaunch of Scuff­mas­ter, Shaw researched sales of Scuffmaster’s exist­ing col­or cat­a­log to find the col­ors and fin­ish­es that were most pop­u­lar nation­al­ly as well as regionally.

“There might appear to be a par­tic­u­lar col­or palette that emerges in the Unit­ed States, but the fact is we are kind of frag­ment­ed when it comes to col­or. I want­ed to look at not only col­ors and fin­ish­es that were sell­ing well nation­al­ly, but also get more micro and look at region­al markets.”

—Mary­beth Shaw, Chief Cre­ative Officer

Sales data pro­vid­ed insight into our var­ied nation­al and region­al col­or pref­er­ences. This infor­ma­tion was used to pro­duce lists of the top ten most pop­u­lar col­ors in each of Scuffmaster’s nine archi­tec­tur­al finishes.

This approach engen­dered a nat­ur­al col­lab­o­ra­tion with Stu­dio RENS. Led by Renee Men­nen and Ste­fanie van Kei­jesteren, RENS uti­lizes ana­lyt­i­cal meth­ods that fore­front col­or as a key aspect of design. ​“They are very method­i­cal and ratio­nal,” says Shaw. ​“And in the end, every­thing they do, aes­thet­i­cal­ly, is beautiful.”

Stu­dio RENS was pro­vid­ed with the Scuff­mas­ter data and tasked with cre­at­ing a final selec­tion of 100 paint col­ors: 60 best­sellers and 40 brand-new shades. RENS sought to enliv­en the palette by look­ing both beyond and between the exist­ing shades, refresh­ing the col­lec­tion by explor­ing over­looked col­ors. By research­ing excit­ing new con­cept col­ors, they expand­ed the scope of the palette.

The new col­lec­tion is pre­sent­ed in a spec­tral array of paint swatch­es for­mat­ted in a 10 × 10 square grid. The visu­al exhibits both pre­vail­ing trends and sur­pris­ing vari­a­tions in our use of col­or, and promis­es excit­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for the new era of Scuffmaster!