This is my color bibliography as exported from Zotero. The final bibliography (PDF) includes a headnote and extended annotations.
| Type | Web Page |
|---|---|
| Author | Alex Byrne |
| Author | David Hilbert |
| Website Title | Color Glossary |
| Date | 1997- |
| URL | http://tigger.uic.edu/~hilbert/Glossary.html |
| Accessed | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:28:07 |
| Extra | "First version published in Readings on Color, Volume 2: The Science of Color (MIT Press, 1997)." |
| Date Added | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:28:07 |
| Modified | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:29:49 |
Simply a glossary, as the title states, and useful as a reference. (How can you talk about color without knowing what Bezold-Brücke hue shift is?)
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| Author | Manlio Brusatin |
| Edition | 1st ed |
| Place | Boston |
| Publisher | Shambhala |
| Date | 1991 |
| Pages | 172 |
| ISBN | 0877735247 |
| Call Number | QC494.7 .B7813 1991 |
| Repository | 35.9.2.51 Library Catalog |
| Date Added | Tuesday, 18 March, 2008 18:46:46 |
| Modified | Tuesday, 18 March, 2008 18:46:46 |
A philosophical and historical essay on color. Often dense and obscure, but contains interesting ideas and anecdotes (some perhaps dubious), such as the associating the eternal argument between color as an innate property of an object, and color as a perception, with the question of lighting (ie, thinkers who consider lighting treat color as perception).
| Type | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author | A. Franklin |
| Author | G. V. Drivonikou |
| Author | L. Bevis |
| Author | I. R. L. Davies |
| Author | P. Kay |
| Author | T. Regier |
| Abstract | Both adults and infants are faster at discriminating between two colors from different categories than two colors from the same category, even when between- and within-category chromatic separation sizes are equated. For adults, this categorical perception (CP) is lateralized; the category effect is stronger for the right visual field (RVF)left hemisphere (LH) than the left visual field (LVF)right hemisphere (RH). Converging evidence suggests that the LH bias in color CP in adults is caused by the influence of lexical color codes in the LH. The current study investigates whether prelinguistic color CP is also lateralized to the LH by testing 4- to 6-month-old infants. A colored target was shown on a differently colored background, and time to initiate an eye movement to the target was measured. Target background pairs were either from the same or different categories, but with equal target-background chromatic separations. Infants were faster at initiating an eye movement to targets on different-category than same-category backgrounds, but only for targets in the LVFRH. In contrast, adults showed a greater category effect when targets were presented to the RVFLH. These results suggest that whereas color CP is stronger in the LH than RH in adults, prelinguistic CP in infants is lateralized to the RH. The findings suggest that language-driven CP in adults may not build on prelinguistic CP, but that language instead imposes its categories on a LH that is not categorically prepartitioned. |
| Publication | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |
| Volume | 105 |
| Issue | 9 |
| Pages | 3221-3225 |
| Date | March 4, 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1073/pnas.0712286105 |
| Short Title | From the Cover |
| URL | http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/105/9/3221 |
| Accessed | Friday, 21 March, 2008 16:15:50 |
| Repository | HighWire |
| Date Added | Friday, 21 March, 2008 16:15:50 |
| Modified | Friday, 21 March, 2008 16:47:16 |
Infants use the right side of the brain to group colors into categories. Adults use the left side of the brain. The evidence suggests this is conditioned by learning terms for colors - that is, language trains a different part of the brain to group colors. Why is that important? Because it shows how fundamental the connection between color and language is: it actually alters brain function. And that, in turn, suggests that color could have language-like functions, such as rhetorical ones.
| Type | Web Page |
|---|---|
| Author | (New York) Museum of Modern Art |
| URL | http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/colorchart/flashsite/ |
| Accessed | Tuesday, 18 March, 2008 19:03:48 |
| Date Added | Tuesday, 18 March, 2008 19:03:48 |
| Modified | Tuesday, 18 March, 2008 19:04:40 |
A Flash interactive catalog for an exhibit at MoMA, collecting abstract color art since 1950. As the introduction suggests, these pieces can be seen as making arguments about color, using color.
| Type | Web Page |
|---|---|
| Author | Claudia Cortés |
| Website Title | Color in Motion |
| URL | http://www.mariaclaudiacortes.com/# |
| Accessed | Friday, 21 March, 2008 14:47:56 |
| Date Added | Friday, 21 March, 2008 14:47:56 |
| Modified | Friday, 21 March, 2008 14:48:48 |
A Flash application that bills itself as "An Animated and Interactive Experience of Color Communication and Color Symbolism". Through a film metaphor, hues are personified: red is "rebellious", "joyful", "visible", etc. The application is divided into three areas: one to "meet the stars" (ie, the featured hues) and view cultural associations, one with short films illustrating the attributes ascribed to them, and a "lab" where the user can experiment with the application's framework. Not scholarly, but an interesting conceptualization of color as a repository of symbolic meaning.
| Type | Web Page |
|---|---|
| Author | Color Marketing Group |
| URL | http://colormarketing.org/ |
| Accessed | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 14:29:40 |
| Date Added | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 14:29:40 |
| Modified | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 14:30:11 |
"Color Sells, and the 'Right' Colors Sell Better". That's the heading at the top of the CMG site, and who could ask for a better declaration of the rhetorical effect of color in marketing? The CMG is famous for predicting "color trends" for the upcoming year, which they associate with other cultural forces - so, for example, popular environmentalism makes some greens prominent in this year's colors. While CMG is non-scientific and non-academic, their work does support the argument that color has psychological and rhetorical effect.
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| Editor | Klaus Stromer |
| Editor | Urs Baumann |
| Translator | Randy Casada |
| Place | Konstanz |
| Publisher | Regengoben Verlag Klaus Stromer |
| Date | 1996 |
| Call Number | QC494.7 .C7 1996 |
| Extra | Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery at Hunter College and other places. |
| Date Added | Tuesday, 18 March, 2008 18:48:36 |
| Modified | Tuesday, 18 March, 2008 18:54:19 |
A collection of short (typically four-page) descriptions of various systems of color created in the European tradition, from Forsius through the contemporary RGB, HLS, and CMN systems. Clearly illustrates the many divergent attempts to formalize, theorize, and understand color - and the failure of any of them to be entirely satisfactory. This collection serves as a nice short history of the idea of color in Europe.
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| Author | Rolf G. Kuehni |
| Edition | 2nd |
| Place | Hoboken |
| Publisher | J. Wiley & Sons |
| Date | 2004 |
| ISBN | 047166006X |
| Call Number | ND1488 .K82 2004 |
| Date Added | Tuesday, 18 March, 2008 19:00:20 |
| Modified | Tuesday, 18 March, 2008 19:02:07 |
A primer in 170-odd pages to color intended for a variety of disciplines, from artists and designers to vision researchers and industrial chemists. Discusses technical topics such as color physics and perception, the mathematics of color, and color chemistry, then delves into color theory for art. Includes many short digressions on topics such as color video equipment. Kuehni's overview, despite its short length, is probably the broadest treatment of contemporary thinking on color I've seen. It's particularly useful as a reminder of the range of specializations interested in color.
| Type | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author | John K. Courtis |
| Abstract | Visual rhetoric within communication seeks to persuade through the use of picturing and encompasses words and colour. Visual rhetoric is present within annual reports. The specific role of colour in financial reporting is a neglected field of enquiry. A survey of 100 Hong Kong annual reports related colour usage to profitability change and found companies used more colour when profitability both increased and decreased. The eight most popular colours published in reports were identified and an experiment used them to proxy a pervasive form of visual rhetoric. Results show that some colours are associated with more (less) favourable perception formation and with more (less) investment allocations. Gender differences also were examined with some positive results. However, the story is not about identifying and advocating any specific colour associations for annual report usage or avoidance. The focus is about whether colour can influence perception formation and investment judgments. The evidence suggests that colour may not possess neutral effects in annual report communication. If replication studies with larger samples and in different cultural settings can corroborate this as a phenomenon then the implications may be far-reaching for annual report preparers, auditors and users. |
| Publication | Accounting Forum |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 265-281 |
| Date | September 2004 |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.accfor.2004.07.003 |
| URL | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=ArticleURL&… |
| Accessed | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:07:40 |
| Repository | ScienceDirect |
| Date Added | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:07:40 |
| Modified | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:08:00 |
| Type | Web Page |
|---|---|
| URL | http://www.colorsystem.com/index.htm |
| Accessed | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:01:06 |
| Date Added | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:01:06 |
| Modified | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:01:06 |
A collection of color resources, mostly related to color systems. Somewhat like an online version of the Stromer and Baumann book; in fact it includes a similar historical survey of color systems. Includes some simple interactive Java applications for exploring a color space (though these aren't actually very interesting). Also includes links to some other online resources. Useful for many of the same reasons as Stromer and Baumann, but also has interesting summaries of cultural interpretations of color for a number of cultural sites (European, Chinese, Hebraic, etc).
| Type | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author | Anne R. Richards |
| Author | Carol David |
| Publication | Technical Communication Quarterly |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 31-48 |
| Date | 2005 |
| URL | http://www.leaonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15427625tcq1401_4 |
| Accessed | Friday, 21 March, 2008 14:35:57 |
| Rights | Copyright (c) 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. |
| Extra | Professional communication scholars have defined the decorative narrowly and subordinated it to informational text. Yet, current psychological research indicates that decorative elements elicit emotion-laden reactions that may precede cognitive awareness and influence interpretation of images. We conceive the decorative in design, and specifically color, as a complex rhetorical phenomenon. Applying decorative and color theory and analyzing design examples illustrating aesthetic, ethical, and logical appeals, we present a range of potential uses for color in electronic media. |
| Date Added | Friday, 21 March, 2008 14:35:57 |
| Modified | Friday, 21 March, 2008 14:40:22 |
| Type | Web Page |
|---|---|
| Author | Dolores Labs |
| Website Title | Dolores Labs Blog |
| Date | 17 March, 2008 |
| URL | http://blog.doloreslabs.com/? p=11 |
| Accessed | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 14:23:44 |
| Date Added | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 14:23:44 |
| Modified | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 14:28:36 |
An informal experiment: using Amazon's Mechanical Turk to farm queries out to thousands of respondents, the investigators asked respondents to name randomly-generated colors. Then they map the responses onto a color wheel. It's an interesting view of how the surveyed population organizes color, how likely they are to use simple versus qualified ("light magenta") color names, how likely they are to use uncommon color names ("cerulean"), and so forth. They also provide tools for mining the data set.
| Type | Web Page |
|---|---|
| Author | Iestyn Jones |
| Website Title | eChalk Ltd |
| URL | http://www.echalk.co.uk/amusements/OpticalIllusions/illusions.htm |
| Accessed | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 14:16:26 |
| Date Added | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 14:16:26 |
| Modified | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 14:17:31 |
Some of the illusions on this site come from Lottolab, but there are also some other classic illusions, some of which are based on color perception. Others aren’t especially relevant to color research, though they’re interesting in their own right. Some are reminiscent of the American Op Art movement, which (like some of the other color-combination works of abstract art) could be considered arguments made with color.
| Type | Web Page |
|---|---|
| Author | R. Beau Lotto |
| Website Title | Lottolab |
| URL | http://www.lottolab.org/ |
| Accessed | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 14:14:16 |
| Date Added | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 14:14:16 |
| Modified | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 14:15:06 |
Lotto and his collaborators have compiled a collection of unusual optical illusions, many of them based on color. In particular there are some impressive examples of how adjacent colors affect the perception of hue, saturation, and brightness. The site also includes information on the researchers’ publications on perception and educational projects. Good examples of cases where physiology and phenomenology trump physics in color perception - though the question of where the discrepancies emerge remains open.
| Type | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author | Glenn S. Smith |
| Publication | American Journal of Physics |
| Volume | 73 |
| Issue | 7 |
| Pages | 590-597 |
| Date | July 00, 2005 |
| Journal Abbr | Am. J. Phys. |
| URL | http://link.aip.org/link/? AJP/73/590/1 |
| Accessed | Friday, 14 March, 2008 19:44:43 |
| Repository | Scitation |
| Date Added | Friday, 14 March, 2008 19:44:43 |
| Modified | Sunday, 16 March, 2008 18:30:36 |
Smith lays out the theory and experimental results for answering the quintessential color question “why is the sky blue?". AJP is a teaching journal (it’s published by the American Association of Physics Teachers), so his focus is on helping physics students explore the problem. For me, though, this piece is an occasion for seeing how the three domains of color - physics, physiology, and phenomenology; or the world, the body, and the mind - interact in this simple and familiar case. Smith explains the interaction of the physics of light and the physiology of color perception; in omitting consideration of the role of the mind, his article opens the door for just such speculation.
| Type | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author | Satyendra Singh |
| Abstract | Purpose – Color is ubiquitous and is a source of information. People make up their minds within 90 seconds of their initial interactions with either people or products. About 62-90 percent of the assessment is based on colors alone. So, prudent use of colors can contribute not only to differentiating products from competitors, but also to influencing moods and feelings – positively or negatively – and therefore, to attitude towards certain products. Given that our moods and feelings are unstable and that colors play roles in forming attitude, it is important that managers understand the importance of colors in marketing. The study is designed to contribute to the debate. Design/methodology/approach – This article reviews the literature relating to color psychology in the context of marketing, highlights inconsistencies and controversies surrounding the color psychology, and, examines the impact of colors on marketing. Findings – Findings of the study are that managers can use colors to increase or decrease appetite, enhance mood, calm down customers, and, reduce perception of waiting time, among others. Research limitations/implications – The direction for future research and limitations of the study are presented. Originality/value – Reviews the literature relating to color psychology in the context of marketing. |
| Publication | Management Decision |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 783-789 |
| Date | 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1108/00251740610673332 |
| URL | http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do;jsessionid=2DAC9881B44EA5C943AAB460DBFA2A47? contentType=Article&hdAction=lnkhtml&contentId=1558119 |
| Date Added | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:39:41 |
| Modified | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:41:28 |
| Type | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author | Peter K. Kaiser |
| Abstract | Physiological human responses to color as evidenced by the electroencephalogram, galvanic skin response, blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate, eyeblink frequency, and oxiometry are reviewed. A casual reading of the descriptive literature on the human response to color leads one to the conclusion that color can have rather specific physiological effects. It is concluded from this review that there are reliably recordable physiological responses to color in addition to those generally associated with vision. However, it may be that some are indirect effects mediated by cognitive responses to color. |
| Publication | Color Research & Application |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 29-36 |
| Date | 1984 |
| DOI | 10.1002/col.5080090106 |
| Short Title | Physiological response to color |
| URL | http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/col.5080090106 |
| Accessed | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:31:22 |
| Repository | Wiley InterScience |
| Date Added | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:31:22 |
| Modified | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:35:48 |
A old but often-cited review on this topic, which is clearly central to the question of color rhetoric. Color is only rhetorical if it has psychological weight; and if it has psychological weight, it should (some would say must) have physiological effects as well. Kaiser finds that there do appear to be "reliably recordable physiological responses to color" (aside from the obvious visual ones), which may be "mediated by cognitive responses".
| Type | Web Page |
|---|---|
| Author | "AbbyNormal" |
| Website Title | Kenneth Burke and Contemporary Rhetorical Theory |
| URL | http://www.digitalparlor.org/fa07/blakesley1/node/240 |
| Accessed | Friday, 21 March, 2008 14:43:37 |
| Date Added | Friday, 21 March, 2008 14:43:37 |
| Modified | Friday, 21 March, 2008 14:44:11 |
A short blog post wondering about the symbolic use of color as a rhetorical element, in relation to Burke's theory of portraiture. Not much here, but it is an example of someone at least considering the idea of color as rhetorical.
| Type | Web Page |
|---|---|
| Author | Geoff Hart |
| Website Title | Geoff-Hart.com |
| Date | 2007 |
| URL | http://www.geoff-hart.com/resources/2007/visual.htm |
| Accessed | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:20:49 |
| Date Added | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:20:49 |
| Modified | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:22:35 |
A short essay, originally published in Intercom, on visual vocabulary and visual grammar as prerequisites for defining visual rhetoric. Useful as a starting point for considering the roles of visual vocabulary and grammar.
| Type | Web Page |
|---|---|
| Author | Andrew Romano |
| Website Title | Newsweek |
| Date | 27 February, 2008 |
| URL | http://www.blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/02/27/how-obama-s-branding-is-working-on-you.aspx |
| Accessed | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 13:58:25 |
| Date Added | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 13:58:25 |
| Modified | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 13:59:23 |
Romano is broadly concerned with Obama's marketing and design, and only addresses color briefly. But this article (mostly an interview with Michael Bierut) is directly relevant to the candidate-website project. And marketing is a rhetorical endeavor: it seeks to establish ethos (the brand becomes an authority) and it operates through tropes such as repetition. Since politics (in the narrow sense) is the ur-locus of traditional European rhetoric, this article usefully ties together marketing, traditional rhetoric, contemporary visual rhetoric, and specifically features such as color and type.
| Type | Web Page |
|---|---|
| Author | Peter K. Kaiser |
| Date | 2007-02-27 |
| Short Title | Joy of Visual Perception |
| URL | http://www.yorku.ca/eye/ |
| Accessed | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:42:23 |
| Date Added | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:42:23 |
| Modified | Friday, 21 March, 2008 15:43:38 |
A series of mostly short chapters (many no more than a page) on various topics in vision science. Focuses mostly on physiological phenomena, including optical illusions and the like. Not tremendously useful, but Kaiser does return to the topic of physiological reactions to color, the subject of his review essay cited below.
| Type | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Author | J. Anthony Blair |
| Editor | Carolyn Handa |
| Book Title | Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World: A Critical Sourcebook |
| Place | Boston |
| Publisher | Bedford / St. Martin's |
| Date | 2004 |
| Pages | 344-363 |
| ISBN | 0312409753 |
| Date Added | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 14:18:53 |
| Modified | Wednesday, 19 March, 2008 14:21:15 |
A philosopher specializing in informal logic and argument, Blair asks whether visual arguments are possible, and if so whether any actually exist. This is an important, even necessary, piece to respond to in developing a theory of the rhetoric of color, since rhetorical color presupposes the more general category of rhetorical image.
| Type | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author | Robert Finlay |
| Publication | Journal of World History |
| Volume | 18 |
| Pages | 383-431 |
| Date | 2007 |
| Date Added | Tuesday, 18 March, 2008 19:05:26 |
| Modified | Tuesday, 18 March, 2008 19:15:16 |
Finlay starts with the classic subjective / objective divide in color theory - specifically with Newton versus Goethe - and then moves through all sorts of interesting topics, like the evolution of color vision, the material history of pigments, treatment of color in various cultures around the world, etc. This article is very useful both for its enormous scope (around the world and across all of biological development) and its collection of fascinating examples. Finley identifies both universal attributes of color and ones that are culturally specific, and so provides a touchstone for analyzing color theories for their subjective and contingent assumptions.
| Type | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author | Michael Taussig |
| Publication | Critical Inquiry |
| Volume | 33 |
| Pages | 29-51 |
| Date | 2006 |
| Date Added | Tuesday, 18 March, 2008 19:15:40 |
| Modified | Tuesday, 18 March, 2008 19:16:20 |
In 1938 the philosopher / ethnographer Michel Leiris asked "what color is the sacred?". Taussig moves from the color theories of Goethe and Proust, to the entry of color photography into the canon of high art, to alchemy and color chemistry, to Burroughs and marginality, to Leiris, and on from there. He claims color has served to bridge the abstract and the concrete - between, say, primitivism and colonized peoples, between the idea of memory and memories, between the names of colors and their visual sensations. A cultural anthropologist, Taussig associates color with "magical polymorphous substance", a numinous material, capable of becoming anything, that some South American shamen believe fills their bodies. Ultimately, what draws him to color is its "mix of depth and transparency": the way it can be at once a simple, direct, visual experience, and at the same time be something magical and impossible to completely grasp. A fine example of contemporary philosophy of color and of the force of color in the imagination - which implies rhetorical power.