I went with this book instead of The Designer's Guide to Color Combinations because a lot of those sample palettes felt dated. This book takes folk art, modern art, currency, logos, etc. from around the world and breaks them down into palettes, giving the RGB and CMYK for each color. Cabarga also provides other color groups not directly derived from the source material, but of a similar style. Each spread shows the same basic design in each of the 12 color schemes. It's an interesting idea, and sometimes it works better than others. Depending on the spread, I feel like 20-30% fall completely flat.

One of the downsides to the "global" approach (particularly with his own combinations) is that many of the palettes come off as markedly "exotic", and could only be used for something very specialized. I would be afraid that the sorts of stereotypes they invoke would distract the viewer from the message. I also can't help but wonder at his choice of source material at times (surely there are better examples of the colors of the "African national spectrum" than a peanut M&M wrapper). His commentary on the source material, too, frequently takes a very patronizing, Western tone and is best ignored.

All this being said, there are some gems in this book with the subtlety and flexibility to be applied to a variety of projects. I'm not sure there's enough to be worth the full price, but it's not bad to have around if you can get it on discount.

(Q) ( )