The Designer's Guide to Color Combinations: Amazon.ca: Leslie Cabarga: Books

Product Description

From Library Journal

This wonderful book is about color and design, but it is not a book of theory that begins with color wheels, primary colors, secondary colors, and color harmony. Instead, it offers design examples from the past century: Victorian, Art Deco, Sixties, Raves, etc., with each illustration including Cmyk color formulas. Cmyk is the color-processing system used by printers and also Photoshop, i.e., you can add in the Cmyk for any color in the book and duplicate it in Photoshop or other paint programs. Along with design examples, there are also chapters on current color styles, limited colors, and "bad color," which actually is pretty cool. Designers will love this book for the examples; others can simply select great colors that go together.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Book Description

Contains 100 years of great color combinations -- 500+ tried-and-true color combinations inspired by actual design work.

Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
The libraries and bookstores are filled with scholarly books on color harmony and color theory. Read the first page

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Concordance

Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover

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Customer Reviews

20 Reviews

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Average Customer Review

4.0 out of 5 stars (20 customer reviews)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Illustrator's CMYK dream come true!, Sep 17 2006

By

Heather Castles "Illustrator" (Adelaide, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Designer's Guide to Color Combinations (Hardcover)

This book is a wonderful quick reference for illustrators hoping to capture the feeling of a particular era with color. Having the CMYK values accessible, as well as examples of their uses in historical artwork is extremely useful. A must have for the modest illustrator's library.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Eyecandy of great inspirational and practical value., April 26 2004

By

R. Clercx "ronald_clercx" (Oostende, BELGIUM) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Designer's Guide to Color Combinations (Hardcover)

This is the first volume of two, the second being 'The Designer's Guide To Global Color Combinations. I own both and I regard them as simply unmissable, because I use as well for recreative as practical purposes.

Each page offers a depiction of a work of art, which may be painting, illustration, texture, fabric. The main piece always has a short description (artist, origin, media) and a personal note by the author why the piece is so eyestriking.

All pieces are catalogued according to time and style, so you'll find art deco, popart, contemporary, ... styles but also 'bad' use of color.

However, this is NOT a book about color theory. The approach is subjective and you may find that your views differ with the author because the appreciation of coloruse is personal (which the author also underlines).

Never the less this is also an outstanding objective guide to historical color use during the centuries starting from the late 19th century till now.

For computer artists it also offers CMYK values, as well for the main piece, and variations on it.

If there would be one negative point, it's only that there is not a cd added with all the palettes, so you would not have to type in the values. And, for people operating mainly in RGB color space, as the book cover states: no RGB values. (you'll find these in the second volume, but for some strange reason they were not added in this first volume).

Despite this small point of criticism: this guide is a work of art unique in it's category. There is nothing that even comes close to the work of endurance the author has done, to offer the reader a practical and inspirational guide to color combining.

A guide you'll browse and browse again.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Amazing resource book..., Jun 14 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Designer's Guide to Color Combinations (Hardcover)

I love this book, it makes my life so much easier coming up with color combinations that work. The best part is that it covers over a century's worth of color schemes, from dark earthy tones of the victorian period to the bright colors of today.

There are so many different color combinations to look at, each with a different variation as well. They're all in CMYK too, which makes it easier since I'm not familiar with the Pantone system a lot of books on color use.

The only drawback to this book is that it doesn't teach you how to create your own successful color schemes, so you'll need another book on color for that. This book tells you to look at the things around you for inspiration although it never tells you how to convert those colors to CMYK mode.

If you have a book or two on the science and practices of good color design, then you'll definately need this for a quick reference to some applied real world design.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars If I'd ever lose it, I'd buy it again!
This book fulfilled every expectation I had prior to its arrival, that is - it's not a color theory book in any way. Read more

Published on Jan 12 2002 by Gustavo Santos

5.0 out of 5 stars Practical Inspiration
Rather than just show color combinations in a vacuum, this book uses real examples from different design periods to demonstrate the use of color. Read more

Published on Oct 18 2001 by FKC