By no means would I con­sider myself an expert in any­thing and I will gladly acknowl­edge that fact. I would like to point out how­ever that there are many dif­fer­ent ways to fake it! When it comes to under­stand­ing what color com­bi­na­tions nat­u­rally work together I have this great book that helps me “fake it” every time.

There are plenty of dig­i­tal resources avail­able today that help design­ers find that unique color com­bi­na­tion for a vari­ety of projects.  Adobe Kuler (avail­able online or as a stand­alone appli­ca­tion) and COLOURlovers Desk­top Color Finder (more about this awe­some tool in a later post) are prob­a­bly the two I would rec­om­mend to any­one look­ing for a fun new toy! As fun as those appli­ca­tions are, they can leave a lit­tle to be desired in my opin­ion, leav­ing a lit­tle gap that can only be filled by flip­ping through pages and pages of beau­ti­ful color combinations.

The Designer’s Guide to Color Com­bi­na­tions — 500+ His­toric and Mod­ern Color For­mu­las in CMYK by Leslie Cabarga is the per­fect book to fill that void.

Our men­tal selec­tion process involves mil­lions of giga­bytes (in com­puter terms) worth of con­scious and sub­con­scious dreams, emo­tional mem­o­ries and other asso­ci­a­tions of color. We may look at an ad in a mag­a­zine and say, “That looks cool!” but our true affin­ity with the col­ors we’re view­ing goes deeper.

There are nine dif­fer­ent chap­ters in the book, not includ­ing the “How to Use This Book” chap­ter, each orga­nized by time period and/or genre .  From Vic­to­rian Color all the way to Rave Color, and my favorite… Bad Color!  The time period com­bi­na­tions include exam­ples from that par­tic­u­lar time period as well as a brief his­tory of that design piece giv­ing you a lit­tle brain food to go along with your cre­ative spark.

This book is a great read for the startup free­lancer, the pro­fes­sional designer or any­one inter­ested in color.