The Designer's Guide to Color Combinations
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About this ebook
It's not just what colors you use, but how you use them. That's why the color combinations in this book are arranged in simple, sample layouts rather than pages of out-of-context swatches. Complete with color formulas in CMYK, these layouts show you which colors work for backgrounds, borders, type, outlines, panels and small text, so you can easily adapt them to your designs.
Leslie Cabarga
Zavier Leslie Cabarga, popularly known as Leslie Cabarga, is an author, illustrator, cartoonist, animator, font designer, and publication designer. A participant in the underground comix movement in the early 1970s, he has since gone on to write and/or edit over 40 books.
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Reviews for The Designer's Guide to Color Combinations
17 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The problem is the HTML codes are too small to read otherwise a nice history of graphic design.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5interesting book for designers looking for different colour groups . Analysis of colour combinations used in vintage designs from different decades. Interesting how colour combinations change over time. I particularly like the way the author shows two different layouts using different proportions of the same colour scheme.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5great historic references to consider. Good references for historic designs
1 person found this helpful
Book preview
The Designer's Guide to Color Combinations - Leslie Cabarga
The DESIGNER'S GUIDE to
COLOR
COMBINATIONS
500+ Historic and Modern
Color Formulas in CMYK
Written and Designed
by LESLIE CABARGA
Color layouts by Leslie Cabarga
and Rose Bevans
The_Designers_Guide_To_Color_Combinations_FM_IL_f001The Designer's Guide to Color Combinations. Copyright© 1999 by Leslie Cabarga. Manufactured in China. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by North Light Books, an imprint of F&W Publications, Inc., 4700 East Galbraith Road, Cincinnati, Ohio 45236. (800) 289-0963. First edition.
This hardcover edition of The Designer's Guide to Color Combinations features a self-jacket
that eliminates the need for a separate dust jacket. It provides sturdy protection for your book while it saves paper, trees and energy.
Other fine North Light Books are available from your local bookstore, art supply store or direct from the publisher.
07 06 10 9 8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cabarga, Leslie
The designer's guide to color combinations / written and designed by Leslie Cabarga: color layouts by Leslie Cabarga and Rose Bevans.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-89134-857-3 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-89134-857-3 (alk. paper)
1. Color in art. I. Title.
NK1548.C23 1999
701′ .85—dc21 98-33482
CIP
EVERY EFFORT HAS BEEN MADE to trace and acknowledge all copyright holders. North Light Books and the author would like to apologize if any credit omissions have been inadvertently made.
THANKS TO: Rose Bevans for items from her collections of 1950s and 1960s ephemera; to Andrew Schwartz and Janet Klein for items from their collection of late nineteenth-century ephemera; to editor Lynn Haller for her patience and humor throughout this arduous process; and to Marga and Anna for making it all worthwhile.
MANY OF THE DISPLAY TYPE FONTS used throughout this book were designed by the author and are available on the Web by visiting www.lesliecabarga.com.
Edited by Lynn Haller
Cover and interior designed by Leslie Cabarga
Cover illustration by Alphonse Mucha and Leslie Cabarga
CONTENTS
Title Page
INTRODUCTION
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
VICTORIAN COLOR
ART DECO COLOR
ATOMIC AGE COLOR
FAR OUT SIXTIES COLOR
CURRENT COLOR
LIMITED COLOR
BAD COLOR
EARTH COLOR
RAVE COLOR
Introduction
The libraries and bookstores are filled with scholarly books on color harmony and color theory. Complete with color wheels, and even mathematical calculations, such books attempt to help the artist achieve successful color through foolproof equations.
Surely, the knowledge of such theories can only be helpful, but for many of us in this day and age, without the benefit (or detriment) of an academy course in color theory, our selections ultimately depend upon predilection or personal taste. As an illustrator, I have never consciously chosen an analogous
color combination or a triad,
and the only split complements
I've gotten have come from my father. Personal taste in color should not be discounted as frivolous. Our mental selection processes involve millions of gigabytes (in computer terms) worth of conscious and subconscious dreams, emotional memories and other associations of color. We may look at an ad in a magazine and say, That looks cool!
but our true affinity with the colors we're viewing goes deeper.
A personal method of color selection eschews the intellectual and methodical left-brain approach, which adores color theory,
and moves the process to the right brain, which bases its decisions upon instinct and intuition. This is related to the process currently taking place throughout the world in which the intellectual/left-brain /masculine approach is, thankfully, beginning to come into balance with the emotional/right-brain/feminine principle.
SMOKER'S LUNG Left: This pharmaceutical illustration was painted by the author in 1990. Above: Four examples demonstrate how a color scheme, as well as elements of an existing design, may be extrapolated for use in a new context. Note the vastly different overall effects achieved through the rearrangement of the very same colors from one example to the next.
Another subconscious identification with color comes from the chakra system of energy centers located within our bodies. For example, the root chakra, represented by red, corresponds to the base of the spine and the sexual center. Little wonder that red is often used by artists in connection with sex and Valentine's Day.
In the recently re-emerging art of color therapy, colored lights are applied, in effect, to restore missing tones which can bring harmony back to a sick. body. Similarly, the color of the clothing you tend to select often reflects your mood, or may, in turn, affect it. For this reason, it is said that people