Design nuance

Design nuance is the capture of the slightest details in color or form to connect the visuals of an object to the mind's cognitive awareness of a specific category.  Let's take the watermelon, for example.

We can see Mini-doll clothing, especially tops, as a blank canvas for the Design team to blend colors, shapes, activities, seasons, themes, and correlate to a set's aesthetic appeal.  Watermelon is a favorite hot weather fruit for sure.  Although it first appeared this January in the Heartlake Supermarket, the slices came with the Amusement Park sets a few months later.  Fairground food often offers watermelon for a quenching snack.
Having Mia & Olivia's tops be a graphic representation (motif) of a watermelon not only ties the look to the sets' activities (fun in the sun), it crosses the realm of play into real-life.  Lots of kids, especially girls, wear shirts with some graphic variation of the watermelon's curve, seeds, and colors.
The designers used the darker green rind color, layered with the paler green inner-rind, then an exploding array of watermelons seeds.  Considering most are "spit out" during consumption, it's fitting!  The lime-green color of the torso section "eludes" to watermelon, without having to be red or pink.  That would be too obvious.
Although many fans gush over new pieces offered by the Friends theme -- of which there are many lovely colors and elemental uses for 3D expression -- some of these more subtle cues go un-hyped.

You can see the various bricks, pieces, elements, and design styles in the Amusement Park sets.  In case these are just now appearing in your local stores, our detailed reviews (linked from the page this graphic above ^ opens to) can give you insight into which aspects will help make your choice for collecting and building.  Whether it's a building technique, a hue array, a specific brick, or for the "action" functions of a set, browsing through a review can always give more information than just a product listing.  This wave of sets certainly does have surprising moving parts.
The Heartlake Riding Club set review is also linked, under the Heartlake City sets.  It also contains the watermelon slice, as well as the lattice-top cherry pie quarter-tiles.  The traditional sets stay close to Friends love of animals -- notably, the horse!
We'll be horsing around more later on ...