Book Review: 100 Years Of Color

100 Years Of Color is a colour swatch book that looks at colour usage from 1900s to 1990s.

For each decade, there's a one page essay on the significant events that happen, e.g. war, and how they affect the use of colours. Then for each year, there is an artwork selected by author Katie Greenwood and the colour palette is derived from the painting. The palette of colours are then reproduced 5 times, each with varying proportions so that you can see the effect of different colours have on one another. All the CMYK formulas are included at the back of the book. st

Katie has mentioned in the book that choosing which painting to represent the year is a challenge in itself. I'm not sure exactly what selection criteria she used though. Anyway, it's difficult to see the evolution of colours or a pattern from the sequential display of paintings and their swatches. They could have been any painting from any time and the book would have turned out to be something like Color in Art which I think is more insightful. The idea of picking an artwork that best represents the year doesn't work for me.

So in essence, this is a book for ideas on what colours you can use with an example of how they look when used together.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

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