A feast of creative projects, Palette is the essential designer’s guide to colour

Colour is one of the most important aspects of a design, and often a tough call to make. There are infinite options to choose from and all sorts of references, from colour charts to colour wheels, to nail the right decision. And now, thanks to viction:ary, there’s a set of newly released books offering colour-themed information to help make that decision a little bit easier.

Titled Palette, these three bold publications showcase a range of projects categorised by colour spectrum. The first focuses on black and white and provides a quintessential low-down to monochromatic art and design projects. Featuring over 110 creative projects from around the world, this volume is the first stepping stone to the fundamentals of how colour is used in the creative industries.

Next up, the second publication of the trilogy assesses the ins and outs of multicolour, highlighting an extensive array of international projects that, this time around, centre on the use of a variety of hues. This then leads on to a third and final volume focused on gold and silver. Here, viction:ary demonstrates the sensibilities and sensitivities that go into using metallics, and how these shiny colours can be used to balance form and function.

The Hong Kong-based art publisher’s editor Lin tells It’s Nice That, “We started the original Palette series back in 2012 to inspire designers through colour, and believe that the creativity and ideas presented in each book still resonate to this very day.” With this in mind, viction:ary recently re-released the series in a flip-friendly size in line with modern reading habits. Nowadays, we consume information at a much faster rate due mainly to the endless scrolling of social media, so with this pocket-friendly edition, viction:ary aimed to make its content “more accessible and convenient” for the designers and readers of today.

“By simplifying the book’s layout and presenting each project in an easy-to-digest manner,” explains Lin, “we hope that each Palette mini book will offer designers and readers bite-size visual inspiration that they can chew on anytime and anywhere.” After revisiting the books’ contents for the redesign, more so than ever before, the designers and editors realised the timelessness of good design done well. Despite the maturing age of the projects inside the publications, Palette shines a spotlight on how carefully chosen colours can add a lasting impact to a design.

While Lin and several other members of the viction:ary team were working on the re-release, “we were reminded of how tireless good ideas really are and how inspiring the featured designers and studios continue to be.” Featuring some of our favourite creatives from the London-based Spin to Pentagram partner Natasha Jen, these treat-sized publications offer delight after delight in not only its choice of colour but also its visual language. Finally, Lin goes on to tell us of these three joys: “Each Palette mini book also contains several new projects that have made an impact recently. It was a big challenge for us to decide which ones to feature, because there are so many amazing projects out there today!”