Contemporary Color: Theory and Use

As an expanded 2nd edition, Contemporary Color: Theory and Use continues to serve as an important foundational survey for current undergraduate curriculum. Written in an easily understood manner, Bleicher avoids the pitfalls of covering fundamental topics like a dry textbook.

Fine artists will find a chapter on pigments, colorants and paints—graphic designers will be satisfied with a section on color and design. Other sections included in the book review theory, harmonies, and cultural influences. A chapter titled Color Psychology makes good use of contemporary and historical illustrations to reinforce the content.

Bleicher does however fall a little short in the art history section. Even though art movements are mentioned (Impressionism to New Media in 14 pages), they are all too disappointingly brief.

What Bleicher does include (missing from most texts), is a chapter titled The Future of Color. This section explores recent up-and-coming technologies presently making their way into mainstream new media and consumer venues.

The publisher also hosts a companion website for educators that dovetails nicely with the book. Offerings include sample syllabi, quizzes and exercises.

Contemporary Color: Theory & Use

by Steven Bleicher

Another Pinboard to Follow

Having resisted Pinterest for about a year now, I finally dipped my toes into the virtual pool of pinboards. My apprehension was truly misdirected and I've come to find that the concept of organizing visual images/links onto a virtual board has become a great teaching tool. After covering the typical graphic design topics such as typography, and history it was a natural move to include color among the related topics. So here is a link to my All Color Matters pinboard .

Purple for the Privileged

Murex Brandaris For centuries, the color purple was both an elusive and exclusive hue. From the time of Ceasar till the conclusion of the Byzantine Empire, purple was worn by kings and those serving in a high office or positions of influence. Rulers like Nero would sentence anyone to death who dared to wear imperial purple. The Roman emperor Diocletain however, took a more economical approach by collecting taxes from anyone who was compelled to slip on the hue. Up until the 1850’s, the arduous process of acquiring this color was more involved then its close cousin—red. Not unlike red, purple was also derived from the animal kingdom. Farmed from the Mediterranean region by the Phonecians as far back as 1500 B.C., Tyrian Purple came from the mucous secretion of a predatory sea snail’s hypobranchial gland ( murex brandaris , murex trunculus , bolinus brandaris ). The sea snails were soaked and then boiled in large vats which allowed the “juice” to be removed from the gland. It t...

Color from the Ordinary Made Into the Extraordinary: Fabian Oefner

From motor oil to evaporated alcohol Fabian Oefner wields these materials as if they were ordinary pigments found on an artist's palette. Known for driving a Ferrari into a wind tunnel to splatter with neon paint, Hefner does't shrink from using unconventional materials to pursue his fixation with color. Hefner's latest series “Photographic Paintings” was an outgrowth of observing the oxidation of b ismuth that he had melted on a hotplate. The cooled compound created amazing iridescent spectrum of color. Oefner quickly realized that a scraped off layer with a spatula would change the colors and that they would on be present for a brief tine. " You get those colors, which are essentially the colors of the rainbow,” he says. The photographs have a minimal amount of digital editing done to them. Hefner's work suspends your fools us by taken advantage of the interplay of poss...

All Color Matters

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