Colour at Work

Challenge yourself

To reconsider received ideas about colour

Take inspiration

From the colourful work of contemporary artists and makers

Be colour confident

As you discover how chromatic creativity is something you can practice every day

In this book for thinkers and makers of all kinds, Kate Davies and Felicity Ford interrogate and celebrate that most unruly of creative concepts - colour.  This is not a book in which you will find any so-called colour theories or illusory quick fixes for your chromatic questions. Rather, in a series of lively, engaging and beautifully-illustrated essays, Kate, Felix and their friends around the world generously share the ideas and approaches that have helped them to develop ways of working with colour that are curiosity-driven, bold and fun.

Early sections of the book shine a critical light on that most persuasive of chromatic objects, the colour wheel, examine debates surrounding colour’s cultural value, and explore how contemporary chromatic ideas have been shaped by historic standards and technologies. Dispelling myths that anyone might inherently be either “good” or “bad” with colour, later chapters encourage creative play and confidence through accessible, life-affirming everyday practices.

Finally, in the book’s closing section, colour is revealed as a connecting thread, weaving its way through many different aspects of identity and experience. Colour is the rich resource with which we knit and stitch and document the story of our time on earth. Colour can bring us back to ourselves as we develop intuitive and self-trusting ways of working. And we can turn to colour whenever we feel the need to use the work of our own hands to question the world in which we live.

With your own creative hands, how will you make colour work?

Editors: Kate Davies & Felicity Ford

Contributors: Max Alexander, Tom Barr, Janine Bajus, Flora Collingwood-Norris, Kate Davies, Felix Ford,  Ella Gordon, Jeanette Sloan, Tressa Weidenaar, Ottilia Westerlund 

120 pp. Designed and produced in Scotland