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The Designer's Guide to Color Combinations Hardcover – March 15, 1999
| Leslie Cabarga (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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If you're from the "I don't know zip about color - but I know what I like" school of color theory, this book's for you. You won't find color wheels or lectures on color harmony here . . . just 500+ tried-and-true color combinations derived from actual design work - posters, packages, even giftware - created over the past century by designers, artists and color experts. You'll find historical color combinations from the Victorian period, Art Deco era, Far-out Sixties, Rave craze - plus current color combinations, such as limited color, "bad color" and much more. Even if you don't know what you're looking for, you'll know it when you see it here.
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.
- Print length144 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherNorth Light Books
- Publication dateMarch 15, 1999
- Dimensions9.5 x 0.75 x 9.75 inches
- ISBN-100891348573
- ISBN-13978-0891348573
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Product details
- Publisher : North Light Books; 1st edition (March 15, 1999)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 144 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0891348573
- ISBN-13 : 978-0891348573
- Item Weight : 1.63 pounds
- Dimensions : 9.5 x 0.75 x 9.75 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #457,576 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #862 in Graphic Design Color Use
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

For most of his life, Leslie Cabarga considered himself not so much a writer but as an illustrator and graphic designer. Yet his very first book, The Fleischer Story (a history of the Max Fleischer animation studio) was published when he was 19 years old, several years before he would become one of the most popular illustrators in New York. Leslie went on to write and/or edit over 40 books, ranging from clip art collections for Dover publications to the ever popular Logo, Font & Lettering Bible, the only manual showing how to create lettering from scratch in the digital age. But he also produced the channeled book, "Talks with Trees," which has been gaining popularity over the past 10 years. Leslie likes to take subjects (such as the Max Fleischer cartoons, and lettering and font creation) and produce the "last word" on each subject. As he says, "It's mostly just to get these topics out of my system so I can move on." And move on he has! As amazon reader reviews of his Lettering "Bible" attest, the humor throughout the instructional text is part of what makes this book so enjoyable. "So I decided to move away from design topics and go for the humor--along with a bit of forward-looking social commentary," Leslie says. The result is the recently-published "We Hold These Truths," the story of what happens when a Truth Bomb drops on the world and people everywhere are compelled to live their truths. The book is as profoundly compelling as it is amusing. Like the book "Trees," We Hold These Truths is a channeled book that Leslie first began "receiving" more than 15 years ago. The contrast between design and spirit channeling is not so far apart, for as Leslie says, "Artists are seekers of truth. We are always questioning ourselves--why should it be this way rather than that? Where is the truth in this statement? The best artists are often those who willingly subject themselves to the most unmerciful critiques of their own creations." And," he says, "my body of work in the graphics field shows that there's nothing airy-fairy about us channelers. Actually, I'm a very down-to-earth guy." Indeed, Leslie tells us he's got another dozen or so books in planning stages on subjects ranging from health and nutrition to human sexuality. Which brings up Leslie's latest book, "Topless Summer Love Girls; A Gentleman's Guide to Women, Relationships & Breasts." It is a book that looks seriously tat men's issues while at the same time satirizing men's obsessions.
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By putting in the CMYK percentages, it is very easy to transfer the colors to a computer for immediate use. For those who are artistically challenged (such as this reviewer), there is a refreshing sense to Cabarga's work. He shows very clearly why bad color combinations are such and why good ones that work do in fact work. Each example is provided in a sensible context rather than a stack of colors, and most valuable is Cabarga's use of variations of the same color set to illustrate how radically different the same group of colors look in different arrangements.
I also liked Cabarga's comments about key illustrators and their subject matter--even including expressing doubts about Paul Whiteman being the King of Jazz. Cabarga seems to know his artists and doesn't mind expressing any opinon that comes to mind whether on artists or the state of just about anything. Moreover, his opinions never get in the way of his discussion of color. (Even the opinions are colorful.) It's good to know books are still written by human beings rather than grey committees.
By jojoshee on February 21, 2022
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This book is split into 'time periods', so you can answer questions such as "I want this to look like an 1880s saloon" or "What would a 1960's hairdresser's look like". Which is okay, but the choices of colours are really quite restricted, typically focussing around some of the dimmer or or more pastel shades. Take a look at the cover. The ranges cover grey/purples, bland oranges and white. If you throw in a bit of a boring green and some pastel / washed out blue, you've pretty much got all the colours the book uses. It's hard to find anything "vivid" (except for the deliberately bad colour schemes used, for instance, in the negative posters of the 50s).
I was looking for a set of colour schemes I could use together, but actually finding things around an anchor colour became really tricky, because they're spread out over the various time zones. I eventually gave up using it for colour schemes for decorating, as the schemes produced effects of blandness, rather than the vibrancy you want from a newly painted room.
Therefore, if you're a UI designer who's specifically looking to create colour schemes from particular periods in time, then this book will give a few, relatively limited schemes that you can try out. If you're looking for a general colour combining book for decorating or general UI design, then this isn't really my top recommendation. There's another one called something like the Colour Combining Bible which I found more useful.
This is just my experience, though. I was, perhaps, naive in expecting it to help me with modern colour combining, so YMMV.
This book is NOT about colortheory: it will not teach you how to use acolorwheel. But it will give fantastic value for money if you want to getan overview of coloruse during the century's. The guide can be used aswell in a practical sense (for each of the examples there are CMYK values)but it also delivers in the plain just browse, marvel, gasp and getinspired department.
Also interesting is the fact that for each of the examples, there arevariations included as well so you can see how different combinations canlead to a total different mood using the same colors in a differentlayout.
If your looking for a book which forfills the needs above, look nofurther, this is it. I think the critics who give bad reviews, can only bejealous about the extreme work it must have costed the author to collect,examine and compile this book.
FANTASTIC !!!










