Johannes Itten's "The Art of Color"
Last spring I took Basic Design class as a required course for the Visual Art and Design program that I am enrolled in at my local community college. I loved the class and enjoyed the many challenges of solving a graphic design “problem”. The required text for the class was excellent and will be indispensable for years to come and I will post about it at a later time. However, the instructor recommended a few other texts that he felt were invaluable. One of them was, “The Art of Color”, by Johannes Itten.
“The Art of Color” covers the physics of color, theory of color, color contrasts and much more. My favorite section is on the spatial effects of color; the way that colors affect our perception of depth, make a shape seem larger or smaller depending on its color.
To be honest I haven’t read the book cover to cover yet; It is about 150 pages written in an authoritative manner that puts me to sleep. But Itten really knew his stuff and his theories shaped the way that we think about color now. “The Art of Color” is worth the $100 or so dollars that it sells for, and is probably a must for most designers and artists.
Have you read all or part of “The Art of Color”? What do you think, is it worth the money? Have you found it to be a valuable resource in your design education or work? I would love to hear from you.
Tags: Art, BasicDesign, BookReview, Color