The Reading Room: Colour in Image-Making

Welcome to The Reading Room, a series in which I recommend three books around a single subject that matters to art direction, each one chosen for what it opened up in my own thinking and practice.

Colour is the fastest-acting element in any image. Before the viewer registers the model, the fashion, or the set, the colour palette has already established a mood, a temperature, and an emotional register. And yet colour is one of the least discussed aspects of art direction, it’s treated as intuitive, as something you either have a feeling for or you don’t. These three books argue otherwise. Colour is a system, and understanding how it works changes how you use it.