Color Scheme Designer - Online Color Tool

One of the best free online tools I’ve seen for creating on-the-fly RGB color. Color Scheme Designer boasts an attractive and user friendly interface that delivers RGB percentages and Hexadecimal codes in large color swatches.The best feature on this website is the ability to preview your color choice through the eyes of a color vision deficiency (color blind) individual. The website lists the eight acquired or inherited conditions and allows the user to easily navigate through each one.

There’s also an area where you can preview two types of prototype webpages that integrate various combinations of color with rollovers and sample text for mono, complementary, triad, tetrad, analogic and accented analogic. This preview can be done with or without the color vision deficiency option. Finally text samples can be generated on the color swatches in white, gray or black to circumvent any issues with contrast.

Designers will find this to be an invaluable when making those critical color choices for websites and applications.

Munsell’s Crusade to Instruct the Masses

We often take for granted the past work done by pioneers such as Albert H. Munsell. Painter, teacher, and inventor, Munsell created the most influential color-modeling system for its time. His efforts devised a “rational way to describe color” through the of use clear decimal notation; using hue, value, and chroma into uniform yet independent dimensions within a three-dimensional space. This idea broke with the traditional approach of identifying colors through a naming scheme, which Munsell thought was “foolish” and “misleading”. Munsell Color System, Atlas of Color Charts. The color system Munsell built back in the 1900 ’ s continues to serve educators, visual artists, and the industries who depend on color matching technologies to produce their products and services. The Munsell Color Company website has a historical overview of Munsell’s legacy as well as examples of company projects that continue to advance the process of achieving accurate color. To peer inside the...

Colors: What They Mean and How To Make Them

It would appear on first glance at this book’s title, that it is a “how-to” text for the hobbyist or textile artist on dye recipes. Some information is given on where pigments are derived from; how to use sources on where to find and create pigments for dying fabric. The real value of the book is not in the recipes but in the cultural history of the pigment sources and the meanings of color, all packaged in a beautifully designed book. Each thought-out chapter highlights a color and is illustrated with photos and fine art reproductions to reinforce the text. Not book for color theorists–but offers a good general survey of color and it's uses throughout the centuries. Written and (visually) presented to hold the reader's attention with interesting facts without overwhelming. Colors: What They Mean and How to Make Them by Anne Varichon

A Perfect Red

A tour-de-force text that succeeds in weaving an illustrious red path through time. With an impressive mountain of scholarship, Greenfield provides little known facts that take us through the political and colonial upheavals in the West Indies and in Spain. Both locales were central to the intrigue the cultivation, importation and trade of cochineal (insect) red dye. The text also demonstrates how the color red has influenced and been integrated into fashion, culture, and mythology throughout the centuries. A few color plates are included which illustrate the progression of how the color was applied as a pigment while being used as an important compositional symbol. A great book that balances history, science and art found within a non-fiction format. A Perfect Red By Amy Butler Greenfield

All Color Matters

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