A great color reference for any graphic artist. A variety of sample color combinations included (Pantone specific). Color choice can be a powerful psycological tool in a design. This book helps define what moods or emotions are evoked by different color palettes.

This book is a beautiful, beautifully put together quick reference to color! The illustrations, to-the-point text, and the resource of pallets makes it a great starting point or cheat-sheet to using color on designs for the concious mind. It has helped me greatly on basic projects like page layout, websites, and application design. This is a must have quick reference for anyone who cares about color harmony and psychological impact or stimuli of self or one's project/product on one's audience and needs on the fly application of the same. I highly recommended.

Let's start by saying that I've been a Graphic and Multimedia Designer for over 10 years now. Like all beginners I used to think that design was all about what ever you liked best.
Well thats worth a good chuckle these days. As an experienced designer will tell you there's a lot more to good design than personal preference.
Matter of fact it's more like a science than anything else. Once you start diving into color theory and color association you begin to realize that there's quite a lot of information to retain and that there's a right and a wrong color for everything.

Well here's your reference guide!

This book has sat on my desk for the 4+ years that I've owned it and has definitely seen better days. The pages are falling out, the cover is beat ta heck and page 63 in particular has been scanned so that I could fold it up and put it in my pocket more times then I can count.

Leatrice keeps her explanations simple and direct and reinforces them with stellar designs of well known products from top notch agencies.
She adds a large section of color palettes in the middle but they've become a bit dated since the release of this book. Some of them are still nice and will at least inspire you to play with some similar colors.

As an added bonus the back of the book has the CMYK values for all of the pantones if you're one of the cave dwellers that dont have a Pantone booklet (shame on you!).

This is not the definitive color theory hand book!
You wont become a master after reading this and there are quite a few design fundamentals that are not included.
But it is a terrific and beautiful reference that you'll find yourself digging through constantly for information and inspiration.

It belongs on your bookshelf.

Nuff said.

Sometimes it's nice to have a resource like this on hand and ready to employ at will...

I've found this book to be very helpful in my recent endeavors.

I love this book! I am a visual presentation designer by trade and therefore did have some color theory classes in college, so much of the information given in this book was not foreign to me. However, the way the colour combinations are divided into moods, and the suggestions that go along with them make this book an absolute "must have" for any designer or artist's library!