What’s It All About?
Starting a new journal is not a negligible undertaking, but the impetus for Colour: Design & Creativity has emerged from the sustained demand for information on colour the publisher has experienced amongst what might be called ‘non-scientific’ professionals.
The Society of Dyers and Colourists has its roots in the textile dyeing, printing and finishing industries. Historically a majority of its members have been more knowledgeable about how to dye fabrics or how to measure the colour of a garment than in how a person actually designs, chooses and uses coloured items. But as design has become increasingly studied and taught as an academic discipline in universities, the Society now understands that a ‘colourist’ can be someone who designs and creates with colour, just as much as someone who manufactures coloured objects or researches the application of colour.
Although design is for convenience recognised as a discrete discipline, it is truly multidisciplinary, involving aspects of science, technology, art, crafts, business, etc. Design represents one of the significant interfaces between art and science, and the journal will be dedicated to exploring this interface, and to providing a forum for workers in hitherto disparate disciplines to communicate the results of their work and to discuss issues of common interest.
Colour is one of the most fundamental criteria in all matters of design, and therefore the journal will seek to nurture a better understanding of colour and its application in design theory and practice, in particular the synergy between colour and design, as opposed to their individual importance.
Articles reporting basic, applied, and theoretical research related to colour are also invited. All authors are encouraged to discuss the practical implications of work reported. Review and explanatory papers, case studies, essays, and reviews of books, events, collections, installations, etc. will also be welcome. Being published online, a key feature will be the inclusion of ‘galleries’ of work from colour professionals and from students.
Articles undergo a process of peer review, managed by the editor and assisted by a panel of international experts forming an advisory panel. As well as text-based submissions, we welcome material in other formats, such as images, movies and audio, provided it is amenable to peer review.
In this inaugural issue we have tried to assemble a collection of articles, reviews and galleries that will be representative of the aims of the journal: items that blend, inter alia, elements of science, technology, art, crafts, psychology and commerce. We hope to include regular reviews in the journal and in the first issue our main review covers the important topic of colour harmony, looking at the way leading philosophers, artists and scientists have viewed this subject over the past 500 years.
This issue also includes research papers that explore the relationship between facial expressions, colours and emotions; the use of colours in local and global markets; a photographic study of ‘non-place’; the use of thermochromic colours in design; colour forecasting and preference in the fashion industry; an article that describes what the author calls ‘a new colour form’; and two related papers that report studies of colour shifts and colours in rooms. The inaugural Gallery section includes an exhibition by the artist and colourist Kevin Laycock, and an exhibition of graduate work in textile crafts from the University of Huddersfield.
We thank the Worshipful Company of Dyers for providing invaluable start-up funding for the journal to ensure that early issues at least can be provided on an open access basis, and we thank all the authors who have entrusted the publication of their work to Colour: Design & Creativity. We invite workers active in colour research, development and application to submit material for subsequent issues.
