When Marcel Wanders asked me to design a concept for his moooi company, I was surprised since I am not a designer.  However I do have ideas, and sometimes good ones… In the train, contemplating the landscape and thinking about moooi, I could not avoid automatically thinking "moooi weer", which means "beautiful weather".  We often say that a person is “playing moooi weer”, meaning he is pretending a little bit or showing off like a beautiful male bird.  A second thought that then came to mind was that when the words were switched, “weer moooi” translates to “again beautiful...” And so the idea was born; I was going to work on a project to re-use and re-design existing products.  Paint seemed the obvious choice, thus creating a sub-brand called “moooi weer moooi”.  It was a vehicle for consumers to refresh their interiors and furniture instead of buying new things.  Paint has always appealed to me.  As far back as my early childhood, I remember the thrill of making something old new or different again with a tin of colour.  Paint also references my profession – forecasting – with a brush of colour... Wait a minute!  Forecasting and moooi weer = I am like a weather forecaster! Clear skies, bright sun, overcast, snow, rain or thunder; all these words instantly evoke a colour, a mood and a moment in time and style.  Thus the concept became a colour prediction in paint to fit the year to come, building up a weather colour range while we went.  The first year, 2002, was quite depressive so we needed SUNSHINE to light us up.  In 2003, a troublesome year filled with combat and conflict, we are fighting back and are more assertive to hold on to our jobs, to rekindle economy and fight for peace.  Therefore THUNDER was an obvious choice, creating a bolt of lightning in our lives, waking up our interiors with a shock treatment of colour. What will the next year bring?  I already know but am not going to tell you yet! Detecting colour and forecasting ranges of shades is a highly intuitive trade where we let our intuition pick up favourites.  Out of the blue, we are able to suddenly feel hungry for brown as if it were chocolate, in need of pink as if it were sex, and ache for white as if it were peace.  But immediately after this first urge comes the moment of reflection and verification, then the time for justification. Why this colour, how does it evolve in time, what is its symbolic value, how strongly will the market react, does it work for all genders, ages, mentalities??  Does global colour still exist? Intuition is useless without reason, reason is useless without guts. Li Edelkoort July, 2003

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