BASIC COLOR
AN INTERPRETATION OF THE OSTWALD THEORY
Egbert Jacobson
Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1948. First edition. Quarto. Black cloth decorated in red. Printed dust jacket. 224 pp. 460 illustrations, 155 in color. Book design and typography by Morton Goldsholl. Jacket with mild edgewear including a couple of tiny, closed tears. Former owners signature to front pastedown, otherwise interior unmarked and clean. Out-of-print. A nearly fine copy in a very good or better dust jacket.
8.5 x 11 hard cover book with 224 pages and 460 illustrations, 155 in color. Includes an appendix, and extensive bibliography.” Here then is the brilliant interpretation of the simplest and most universally applicable color theory yet conceived. In the 20 chapters of the book the author discusses clearly and thoroughly the basic organization of color organization and color harmony and their practical application."
. . . "By means of an ingenious arrangement it is possible to relate the color charts on one page with those of another for ready selection of infinite color harmonies and combinations." Basic Color culminates the efforts of the Container Corporation of America’s head of design Egbert Jacobson work with corporate colorist pioneer Walter Granville to adapt Wilhelm Ostwald’s color system into a tool usable by designers and artists.
“Sometime during the late 1930s, discussions with Helen D. Taylor and Faber Birren brought out the need for a systematized listing and color specifications of the words commonly used to describe the color of general merchandise for the mass markets. The Color Harmony Manual was chosen by the editors as the color arrangement best suited to their purpose for the following reasons: the relationship of the basic color words to the organizational concepts of the Ostwald system, the simplicity of organization and ease with which colors are found, the representation of colors best known in merchandising by actual samples, the efficiency of chips in removable form, and the usefulness of dull and glossy surfaces. The color names in this book were obtained in principal part from preliminary drafts made separately by Taylor and Knoche.”
“Included were names then commonly accepted for describing merchandise offered in the catalogs of Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck and by department stores in newspaper advertising. As the work progressed, frequent reference was made to already published works on color names: Color Standards and Nomenclature, Ridgway, 1912, Dictionary of Color, Maerz and Paul, 1930, Color and Color Names, Plochere, 1946, and others.”
“It is not accidental that Egbert [Jacobson] was able to build up a most unusual Design Laboratory for Container Corporation of America. He was fully equipped for such a responsibility. As the design-minded son of a well-known Hungarian printer and publisher, he was working in the Graphic Arts at an early age. From practical-minded craftsmen he learned the significance of type and typography, the use of paper and printing ink, the mechanics of reproduction and the techniques of bookbinding.” — CCA Packaging Designer Albert Kner, 1952
Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald (Germany, 1853 – 1932) was a Baltic German chemist and philosopher credited with being one of the founders of the field of physical chemistry, with Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Walther Nernst, and Svante Arrhenius. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909 for his scientific contributions to the fields of catalysis, chemical equilibria and reaction velocities.
Following his 1906 retirement from academic life, Ostwald became much involved in philosophy, art, and politics. He made significant contributions to each of these fields. Ostwald has been described as a polymath.
Although, Ostwald began his career in the 1880s studying the effects of physical chemistry, it was not until his retirement in 1906 that he started his work in color theory and color organization. Through the art of painting, Ostwald noticed there were technical problems with color and their harmonious balance with one another. These difficulties set the stage for his research in creating colors through scientific formulas.
In 1916, Ostwald wrote The Colour Primer, which introduced a color system devoted to the relationships between colors, which suggested that harmony is created by color order. He hypothesized that creativity could be arranged in a practical manner and broke his color theory down into two scales. The first part was based on a gray scale with ranges of achromatic colors from white, various ranges of gray, to black. The second was based on a scale of eight, primary hues of yellow, orange, red, violet, ultramarine, turquoise, sea-green and leaf-green. Ostwald proposed this theory in a 3-dimensional format in the shape of a double cone positioned on a circular base. The 3-D classifications were formed into a triangular array of colors, all infused with different levels of achromatic colors. Ostwald also used a numbering and lettering system to designate the amount of white, gray and black added to each color, thus forming scientific notations for the creation of color.
Understanding the science behind colors became one of the many ways Ostwald believed chemistry could contribute to art. It was through this belief that he started to produce his color system into color tables, scales, charts and atlases. Right up to the end of his life Ostwald studied colours and shapes, in the endeavour to find a scientific standardization for colours. His main works in this field are Die Farbenfibel (The coulour primer), Die Farbenlehre (Colour theory), Die Harmonie der Farben (Harmony of the colours). He also published a periodical Die Farbe (Colour). The objective of thesee books were to help artists create color for their designs by means of chemical formulas and then easily translate them into print through publishing companies.
Ostwald’s color tables can also be seen as early blueprints for present day color systems, thus ensuring his outstanding talents will carry on through modern times in not only chemistry, but in color theory, as well.
"For anyone it is always a good idea to begin at the beginning, especially the designer who really should know one end from the other." — Morton Goldsholl
Morton Goldsholl (United States, 1911 – 1995) was a lifelong resident of Chicago, where he studied at the Chicago Institute of Art and the Institute of Design and, in 1955, formed Morton Goldsholl Associates. He was a faculty member at The Abraham Lincoln School for Social Sciences, the educational institution run by the Communist Party USA. Goldsholl carved out his niche with corporate identity programs, packaging, and animated commercials, and produced the Good Design Logo for the Merchandise Mart and the Museum of Modern Art in 1950.