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cloverbeee's review against another edition
informative
2.75
I think i was wostly just looking for.... more.
I was bored by the repetition of 'X color is made by chemical process A and was crazy expensive but the only option for oil painting until Dr Doofinshmirtz (age 8) dicked around and created Y color revolutionizing the world of color while simultaneously getting rich and causing mass death by toxicity.' I wasn't looking for the life of the pigment (that's the birth of the color) I was looking for more along the lines of what a specific color evokes, what brands use it, when was it popular in clothing/ decor, were there legal battles over the color rights? For god's sake Anish Kapoor is mentioned at least 3 times in the book but not his controversy in the novel color field. Vantablack was even mentioned by name and it wasn't brought up!
The colors selected for profile were of historical significance but many have disappeared from use entirely and the focus on the industrial manufacturing process and oil paint popularity had diminishing returns for each subsequent color. Including colors of modern relevance or examples of historic colors in a modern spotlight was more of what I was looking for.
Many of the colors selected had such vague descriptions, varied wildly, or were compared to other colors referenced in the book. A visual aid showing the gradient associated with a specific name, comparing referenced colors against each other, or even a HEX code to search colors in other mediums would have been a massive improvement.
Many of the colors' origins reference items that could have been included as images or illustrations.
A few colors were filed according to the original understanding of the color versus the modern.It is a lost opportunity to not visually compare the old and new meanings of a color name.
This book made the nonsensical decision to divide the colors into families (whites, pinks, yellows, etc) where the categorization seems to be arbitrary. The magenta section defines it as the British twin invention to fuchsia, has no written color description itself, but is filed under Purples despite the last sentence "the color is associated almost exclusively with the (decidedly pink) process ink used in CMYK color printing." Nude & beige vs khaki suffer from this bizarre categorization too.
TLDR: a book about colors should have more pictures
I was bored by the repetition of 'X color is made by chemical process A and was crazy expensive but the only option for oil painting until Dr Doofinshmirtz (age 8) dicked around and created Y color revolutionizing the world of color while simultaneously getting rich and causing mass death by toxicity.' I wasn't looking for the life of the pigment (that's the birth of the color) I was looking for more along the lines of what a specific color evokes, what brands use it, when was it popular in clothing/ decor, were there legal battles over the color rights? For god's sake Anish Kapoor is mentioned at least 3 times in the book but not his controversy in the novel color field. Vantablack was even mentioned by name and it wasn't brought up!
The colors selected for profile were of historical significance but many have disappeared from use entirely and the focus on the industrial manufacturing process and oil paint popularity had diminishing returns for each subsequent color. Including colors of modern relevance or examples of historic colors in a modern spotlight was more of what I was looking for.
Many of the colors selected had such vague descriptions, varied wildly, or were compared to other colors referenced in the book. A visual aid showing the gradient associated with a specific name, comparing referenced colors against each other, or even a HEX code to search colors in other mediums would have been a massive improvement.
Many of the colors' origins reference items that could have been included as images or illustrations.
A few colors were filed according to the original understanding of the color versus the modern.It is a lost opportunity to not visually compare the old and new meanings of a color name.
This book made the nonsensical decision to divide the colors into families (whites, pinks, yellows, etc) where the categorization seems to be arbitrary. The magenta section defines it as the British twin invention to fuchsia, has no written color description itself, but is filed under Purples despite the last sentence "the color is associated almost exclusively with the (decidedly pink) process ink used in CMYK color printing." Nude & beige vs khaki suffer from this bizarre categorization too.
TLDR: a book about colors should have more pictures
sarahareinhard's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
4.0
Fascinating book that can be read in dabbles. Equal parts history and entertainment and beauty.
kklecornu's review against another edition
informative
fast-paced
3.0
This book had a lot of interesting tidbits about color creation and historical uses. I was disappointed by the focus on how pigments are made for paint, and instead was hoping for more cultural and societal contexts about use of different shades.
sarahshoemake's review against another edition
5.0
This book is a fascinating cultural history of color and I can’t stop thinking about it.
mikewardevrybdy's review against another edition
5.0
Everything you wanted to know about color but we’re afraid to ask. So much information to take in but always interesting.