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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
Read the 50th Anniversary Edition, which was a little longer.
Great book, wish I read this to complement my foundation studies at RISD.
Great book, wish I read this to complement my foundation studies at RISD.
More a reference book with exercises that are done in design classes (my major had them as well). The theory was a bit too abstract and the structure of the book is weird, still a very important book for color interaction.
Great, but highly—highly—technical. Better approached with the companion book “Interacting with Color: A Practical Guide to Josef Albers’s Color Experiments” by Fritz Horstman and some ChatGPT to make sense of it all in a memorable format.
An exploration of relational color theory, which is pretty great in its own right. I struggled a little flipping back and forth between the text and the panels of examples at the end of the book, and agree with certain other reviewers that more examples and less text might've been more useful (since I am admittedly unlikely to do all the recommended experiments with my own colored paper).
informative
fast-paced
This is my fault. I don’t have the intellectual faculties developed to understand this book. Wasn’t expecting it to be a critique and was hoping for more practical content.
Interaction of Color is comprised of two halves. The first half of the book contains the main text and is printed in black and white. The second half consists of color “plates” which showcase specific examples from the main text, along with some supplementary text of its own. This format requires keeping two bookmarks—one for your position in the reading, and one for the corresponding illustrations some 100 pages later. For a book devoted to the study of color, this is baffling and mildly infuriating.
I suspect this format is held over from the book’s original 1963 edition, when printing a full color book may have been prohibitively expensive. To blindly adopt this design over 50 years later is an unfortunate oversight.
Albers’s writing seems directed more toward teachers like Josef Albers and less toward people like Josef Albers’s students. It instructs readers why colored paper is best for classroom projects (mixing paints and textures is distracting), why to restrict a certain project to vertical strips of color only (shapes are distracting), and which brands of acetate sheets to buy (“Zip-a-tone,” “Artype,” and “Cello-tak”).
Like a true academic, Albers’s tone is pretentious and dry. Oddly, he seems to love inserting line breaks at arbitrary points. He may fancy Interaction of Color a work of poetry, but I’d really rather read text with a predictable line-length.
Form and format aside, the content is quite good. At its original publishing, Albers’s work was revolutionary, and it still holds its own in 2017. Interaction presents novel ways of interpreting and applying color, it’s opened my mind to colors and color combinations I may have dismissed previously. If you’re a designer, Interaction of Color is a book worth adding to your collection.
Regrettably, nowhere in the 50th anniversary is there a mention of how to apply these techniques to screen design for digital designers like myself.
I would love to see an updated edition—or perhaps a new book entirely from one of Albers’s students—which corrects the issues listed above, goes beyond staged classroom examples to point out meaningful uses of color in the real world, delves into the differences between print and screen, and overall makes the book more practical and approachable without losing Albers’s pioneering spirit.
I suspect this format is held over from the book’s original 1963 edition, when printing a full color book may have been prohibitively expensive. To blindly adopt this design over 50 years later is an unfortunate oversight.
Albers’s writing seems directed more toward teachers like Josef Albers and less toward people like Josef Albers’s students. It instructs readers why colored paper is best for classroom projects (mixing paints and textures is distracting), why to restrict a certain project to vertical strips of color only (shapes are distracting), and which brands of acetate sheets to buy (“Zip-a-tone,” “Artype,” and “Cello-tak”).
Like a true academic, Albers’s tone is pretentious and dry. Oddly, he seems to love inserting line breaks at arbitrary points. He may fancy Interaction of Color a work of poetry, but I’d really rather read text with a predictable line-length.
Form and format aside, the content is quite good. At its original publishing, Albers’s work was revolutionary, and it still holds its own in 2017. Interaction presents novel ways of interpreting and applying color, it’s opened my mind to colors and color combinations I may have dismissed previously. If you’re a designer, Interaction of Color is a book worth adding to your collection.
Regrettably, nowhere in the 50th anniversary is there a mention of how to apply these techniques to screen design for digital designers like myself.
I would love to see an updated edition—or perhaps a new book entirely from one of Albers’s students—which corrects the issues listed above, goes beyond staged classroom examples to point out meaningful uses of color in the real world, delves into the differences between print and screen, and overall makes the book more practical and approachable without losing Albers’s pioneering spirit.
Some books are classics for a reason. So honest, so insightful and full of wonderful one liners.
One of the most invaluable books for any inspiring visual artist. The language can be a bit pretentious and seemingly impenetrable, but its theories and ideas are utterly fascinating and have had a massive impact on the way I create my art.
First, I'll acknowledge the importance of this book in the timeline of art and color education. The first 70+ pages are literal guides in teaching color theory. Adler's approach is all about color relation—how one color next to another changes the way we perceive it.
I wanted this book to give me a hard and fast answer to how to use color and apply it to art and design—but it was more of a guide on how to experience color, and in a roundabout way, how to apply it.
Worth a look for any art educator. Not quite what I was looking for though.
I wanted this book to give me a hard and fast answer to how to use color and apply it to art and design—but it was more of a guide on how to experience color, and in a roundabout way, how to apply it.
Worth a look for any art educator. Not quite what I was looking for though.