Pushing the colour boundaries with the Nokia Asha 501

The Nokia Asha 501 sets an exciting standard for affordable smartphones, offering a stunning design at a great price point. An incredible amount of effort went into getting details like the colouring right, and we’ve been speaking to colours and materials expert, Grace Boicel from Nokia Design, to find out more about the colours used on the Asha 501.

“The Nokia Asha 501 has a seamless removable monobody,” explains Grace, “and the design brings colour, purity and craft to the device as well as building on our approach to physical and digital harmony. I think these features are evident in everything we currently do at Nokia, and the colours have been prevalent across the Lumia, Nokia Gear and Asha range.”

“The Nokia Asha 501’s elegant and clean lines are reinforced through the purity of the bold colour palette we use,” adds Grace. “Using CMYK colours has become iconic for Nokia, but we are always evolving, and always pushing the boundaries of what we can do with colour for our products. You can see that in the new bright colours of red and green on the Nokia Asha 501 where we have taken elements of our CMYK palette and highly saturated the colour.”

Crafting the perfect colour

“To create a colour that’s more amplified and saturated is much more difficult to do, so we had to work a lot more closely with our colour pigment and materials vendors, and we had to go through a lot of tests,” explains Grace.

The tests help to ensure that your Nokia Asha 501 will still look like new several years down the line, with colours proving as bright and vibrant as the day the phone leaves the factory.

“Nokia conducts rigorous testing of the colours and materials to ensure that quality remains high for every device in our portfolio. We’re testing for the effects of heat and sun, and even the effects of different hand creams that people use. We also test for extreme temperatures and different environments, and we want to ensure that none of these things result in colours on the Nokia Asha 501 starting to fade,” Grace adds.

Crafting the colours is also about creating the physical and digital harmony, which means the colours we create need to work well in both worlds. This attention to detail enriches the overall experience of the Nokia Asha 501.

The Nokia Asha 501 is available in a range of vivid colours: bright red, bright green, cyan, yellow, white and black. “The important thing is that we’re not concentrating on one colour,” Grace emphasises. “It’s about creating choice. We’re really challenging the idea of a frequently monochromatic market.” 

“We’ve been really happy to see that the colours we’ve introduced – such as yellow and cyan – have done fantastically well, and I think that shows the market is really changing when it comes to how people see colour. I believe they’re tired of only seeing black phones!”

It’s a trend that’s also stretching worldwide, with people wanting more colours wherever they are. Grace explains: “Trends are proving a lot more global, more so than ever before. Tastes used to be more regional, but today people are very savvy, they’re following trends through the Internet, and they know very well what’s going on.” 

Grace concludes: “The approach we take with colour, purity and craft is something that people are looking for today.” And they can have everything they want in the Nokia Asha 501.

Grace concludes: “Our principles with, colour, purity and craft is something that people are looking for today.” And they can have everything they want in the Nokia Asha 501.