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For the Color Scholar: Out-of-Print Classics

The below is a list of notable out-of-print books in .pdf form. Each text has its own unique interpretation on color application, general theories, etc.

Source: Theory and Practice of Color
The oldest text of the group is Elementary Color (1895) written by Milton Bradley the same Bradley who is synonymously linked with The Game of Life, Candyland, and Battleship. This was not Bradley's first attempt into the forays of color. Prior to this publicaton he had addtionally authored Color in the Schoolroom and Color in the Kindergarten.

Faber Birren’s Selling With Color is a book that ...“ has been written to be of practical benefit to modern business, to assure the effective development of consumer products, merchandising, advertising, packages, displays”.

Regardless of when any of these were published, these texts still retain color standard information of which can still be found in practice today.


Colour Aesthetics: Combinations of Colors with Tints and with Shades
by F. Louis Barber (1900)

Selling with Color
by Faber Birren (1945)

Itten, The Elements of Color
Edited by Faber Birren (1961)

 Elementary Color, 3rd Edition
by Milton Bradley (1895)

Goethe’s Theory of Colours
Translated by Charles Lock Eastlake (1982)

Color Balance Illustrated
An Introduction to the Munsell System
by A.H. Munsell (1919) 

Color Notation
by A.H. Munsell (1913)

Theory and Practice of Color
by Bonnie E. Snow, Hugo B. Froehlich (1920)



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