Creative Toolkit — Books About Colour for Designers
We started our colour talk with a bit of theory and psychology, breaking down the key colours and learning a bit more about what each one represents when it comes to branding. But of course — that’s only the beginning when it comes to learning about the wonderful world of colour as a creative and designer, and I wanted to follow that up by sharing two of my must-have books about colour. There are so many colour resources out there, but these are the two I keep close by and reach for time and time again, with the perfect balance of information and inspiration.
No. 1
The Designer’s Dictionary of Color
A great resource for an overview of key colors often found and used in art and graphic design, this books takes a closer look at 30 specific shades, organized by spectrum. It includes charts showing the color ranges and palette variations, along with definitions of the specific hue shown, each color’s creative history and the cultural associations. It also showcases a handful of examples and applications for each color, which is a great reference for ideas and inspiration, giving you a sense of how you might use a specific shade, and what’s worked well in the past. I really like the fact that it’s geared specifically towards graphic designers with the examples, and goes beyond just color inspo, but also include layout, type and branding inspiration to consider.
No. 2
Palette Perfect
This book evolved from Lauren Wager’s earlier color blog and resource for designers, Color Collective, and when she came out with the book, I couldn’t get my hands on it fast enough. It’s another book that finds that balance between practical guide and inspirational resource, exploring moods, feelings and color combinations and reminding us how intertwined emotions are to color. Each chapter is based on a mood — like magical, mysterious, or playful — which sets the tones for the palettes included in that section. It’s full of beautiful imagery of objects, still lives, landscapes, interiors and fashion, which help to illustrate and bring to life each color and overall mood of that particular chapter. And of course the colour palettes. Found at the end of each chapter, there’s a collection of palettes inspired by that chapter’s mood, with a visual reference and the breakdown of each colour by CMYK and RGB values.
