Book Reviews: Technical Presentations & Public Speaking
Color Charts: A History
Anne Varichon. 2024. Princeton University Press. [ISBN 978-0-6912-5517-0. 284 pages. US$55.00 (hardcover).]
Index Terms—color charts, graphic design history, historical context, visualization
Reviewed by Amanda Horton, Director of Design History Minor, University of Central Oklahoma.
Anne Varichon’s Color Charts: A History is an exquisitely presented book with a fascinating history that I am sure many have never considered before. She divides the book into seven clearly defined sections, including “Grasping Color: Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries,” “An Ideal System: Eighteenth to Mid-Nineteenth Centuries,” “The Chaos of Synthetic Color: Mid- To Late Nineteenth Century,” “A Revolution in Color: Late Nineteenth Century to World War I,” “Bringing Color to the Masses: Between the World Wars,” “Jubilation of Color: 1950s–1980,” and “ The Color Chart: Multitude, Icon, Idol, 1990s to the Present.” The table of contents appears at the end of the book, which is an interesting choice, I only found it when I went looking for the index, of which I found none. Despite these issues, the contents are presented well, and the text is easy to follow.
The visualization of these color charts is an interesting facet of graphic design history that has not been reported, yet Varichon easily identifies the popular design trends throughout the book. Varichon expertly photographed, scanned, or otherwise digitized the color charts. This is especially important because representing many charts are three-dimensional as two-dimensional charts can be tricky, but the author has accomplished this. While many color charts are full of rich, vibrant colors, especially after the synthetic color revolution, some charts feature mostly neutral colors or are a succession of dark tones. In some instances, the colors appear as originally presented, but in others, Varichon acknowledges that colors on these charts may have degraded over time.
Color Charts presents a diverse collection of charts throughout history beginning with the rotae urinarum, a chart used from the fifteenth century to identify shades of urine and culminating with a color chart of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s outfits from 2012. Two interesting bookends for sure. Throughout the book, Varichon presents various fabrics, ribbons, paints, and textile dyes, and others. Early charts almost always featured the product itself, whereas later charts might feature printed color as an approximation of what you might get, with the warning that printed colors might not be exact. Many charts featured use the Leporello binding system, which is an accordion-fold system that Varichon credits to Aztec codices.
Beautifully laid out, thorough explanations along with a running dialog accompany each color chart example. One can easily identify the differences through the use of serif text for the running dialog and sans serif text along with headings representing each specific chart. In some instances, Varichon includes cultural context to support the importance of the charts. One such example included in the description of Emdé Lipstick Shades explains how lipstick “became a symbol of women’s rights when Elizabeth Arden offered it to suffragettes protesting in New York in 1912” (p. 196). Color Charts is a fascinating history as well as a collector’s item for those who love color.