Roy G Biv

by Jude Stewart (Artist)

Why is the sky blue? Why is pink for girls and blue for boys? Why do prisoners wear orange? And why can one colour have so many opposite meanings? If lobsters are a red emblem of privilege how is it that a red flag can also be the banner of Communism? Jude Stewart, a design expert and writer, digs into this rich subject with gusto, telling her favourite stories about colour as she discovers what it can really mean.

Genres: Nonfiction, Art, History, Design, Science, Microhistory, Art Design

176 pages, Hardcover

First published September 17, 2013

About the author

I write about design and culture for magazines including Slate, The Believer and Fast Company among others. As a contributing editor for Print, I also blog twice monthly about color, patterns, and other design-related hilarities. And I do it all from the great city of Chicago.

Reviews

[Jude Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caveat: I read it because I also wrote it!

[Pita-eater · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had a similar experience to GoodReads user "Starry," see his/her review from Oct 2013.

This book was a major disappointment on multiple levels.
1. The formatting, editing, and graphic design was some of the most sloppy work I've seen in a long time. Too-tiny font, all kinds of typos, errors in cross-references, and inconsistent design choices are just a few of the pet peeves I encountered.

2. In addition to the typos and noticeable formatting flops, I also found a few "facts" that were incorrect. For example, Stewart mentions the Bible story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and how all three men perished in the fiery furnace. When in fact, the whole point of the story is that they all live. Errors like that call into question the validity of Stewart's other stories.

3. The author talks a lot about purple but I don't think she ever mentions violet, which I found odd given the title of the book.

4. The book was designed to be read sporadically and in any order. This might be fine for a coffee table book full of photos; but purely considering the content of this book (and not the design), I found myself wanting to read straight through and not at random. Unfortunately, sitting down to read a chapter or two only makes it more apparent that Stewart's stories and fun facts are actually shallow, leaving this reader wanting more information.

PS: It's very possible that the publisher, graphic designer, and editor (or lack of editor) were the ones who did a poor job with the book, and that it's not entirely the author's fault. If true, it must be very discouraging to have someone else create a poor quality book with your content.

[Betsy Robinson]

I didn't really read this book, so I'm not going to rate it. The mnemonic ROYGBIV popped into my head and I went down the rabbit hole of googling and ran into this title; my library has it so I took out the book.

This is a terrific resource for anybody doing research about any color or anything about color. I wish I'd had it when I needed it for an article about research on the color red: Red State Advantage? many years ago.

It's fun to page through and I hope I remember it if I need to research color again.

[Sesana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really a book of color related trivia, ROY G. BIV is fun in a coffee table, pick it up when you like sort of way. It isn't necessarily meant to be read straight through, though it won't hurt your enjoyment if you do. There were a few things that kept me from completely enjoying it, though. For one, the type is awfully small. I know that it's a small point overall, but I would have much preferred slightly larger type. There's also an awful lot of underlined text, which lead to notes in the margins. I tried to read all of them at first, but just gave up. They aren't really related to the text, they're just directing the reader to other parts of the book. Which would be better if the relationship between the underlined text and the margin note was more than slight, if you squint and tilt your head to the side.

More seriously, I caught a few errors in the text. Perhaps the most obvious one was that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did not, as any former Sunday school student can tell you, die in the fiery furnace. It's sort of the point of the story. So when Stewart says that they did, I know that she barely skimmed the story, or based that part of the book on foggy memories, and didn't get the point of the story. Which makes me wonder, how much of the rest of the book is based on skimmed, poorly remembered, or misunderstood factoids?

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was very cleverly designed to use color and in-line “links” to other parts of the book to make it a non-linear reading experience. Visually it was a very interesting book to interact with, and it contains a wealth of facts about colors, even imaginary colors! But it didn’t really keep my attention. I felt that after a while of bopping back and forth to follow the trails, it was all pretty superficial infotainment.

[Starry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is beautifully -- almost poetically -- written and full of interesting factoids about color. The format is unusual. In fact, the book is as much formatting as it is about content. Chapters are arranged by color, and each is introduced with an intrigue-building block diagram that overviews its content. Within a chapter, each topic is only 1-2 paragraphs in length, with certain phrases underlined in color to direct the reader to related material "advertised" in the side margins. Chapters also contain well-selected quotations about color in bright graphics.

So, after saying all those complimentary things, why didn't I give this book a higher rating? Well, once again, on GoodReads we give ratings not necessarily for the quality of the book but for the quality of our experience as a reader. And, in my case, the book simply wasn't what I had hoped for or expected.

I had heard about ROY G. BIV on NPR soon after enjoying several great podcasts (eg, NPR's Radio Lab) about color. So my interest was peaked even before hearing about this book, and I was eager to learn more. But this book didn't offer the detail I wanted. Instead, it's chock full of even more soundbytes -- more starting points rather than the in-depth stories behind color and its significance.

Two other aspects I appreciate and yet were issues for me:

1. The whole idea of writing in little factoids is very contemporary; it fits with the age of Twitter and Facebook posts and bulleted PowerPoint slides. I get that. And yet, for me, it's so unsatisfying to sit down with a book written in that style, because I expect something different from a book. I especially found the side margins distracting -- at first, I felt obligated to read the side margin every time I came across an underlined phrase. But these were repetitive, sometimes referring you back to the page you had just flipped. So was this book meant to be picked up to a random page rather than read through? The book came across as an advertisement for itself rather than the actual book.

2. I appreciate how much research this book required, and I commend the author for picking such interesting information from the wealth of data she must have come across. And I love how comfortably the content crosses cultures. BUT when one famous story with which I'm very familiar is incorrectly described, it affects the credibility of all the material with which I'm not familiar. Case in point: on page 43, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego do not "perish in molten orange style in a furnace." The whole point of that story is that they DON'T perish in the furnace.

[Kait Mannino · Rating 5 out of 5]

An intriguing blend of Eric Carle and House of Leaves.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting little book on colour, and some of the historical and cultural meanings of different colours/pigments etc..
But I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought the type was a little small!
I thought it was just me and me aging eyeballs!

[Razilee · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Oranges are variously capable of reproducing sexually or asexually, incestuously or even by spontaneous virgin self-insemination. As one pomologist (orange scientist) observed to McPhee: 'The sex life of citrus is something fantastic.'"

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book with countless divertissement on color and history. A real joy to read.

[Anastasia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hugely disappointing. The introduction alone is so full of errors and misinformation that this text should never have made it to print.

[Emily Bragg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun and fluffy

[Lari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of interesting facts about colours, though I found the notes up the side more distracting than helpful.

[Patrick Spiegelman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gem of a book. Jude Stewart basically use one of culture's greatest "commons"—color—to radically re-invent the genre of the commonplace book, that volume of idiosyncratic, idiosyncratically compiled knowledge par excellence. The knowledge here is perfectly proverbial, a vast expanse of fact, anecdote, legend, myth, and wish from countless cultures and epochs. It's the kind of knowledge which, regardless of time and place, tries to pin down otherwise slippery and unknowable phenomena: how a color comes to feel "natural" to its subject, how it sutures itself to the silliest and gravest things in life; how the abstractions of light-waves come to actually mean, and mean so differently depending on when and where. Fastidiously researched, Stewart's book is a kind of meta-compilation of such knowledge, and like any author of a good commonplace book, she appears to compile, connect, and curate from a depthless, almost obsessive love of the topic.

She also clearly loves language, and the visual focus ought not conceal the fact that Stewart writes as well as she sees. Her pen is swift, salty, and often hilarious. The compact, aphoristic structure of the text, one of her most important conceits, often pressures the words into prose poems full of sensuous felicity: on one page, brown "prunes sweat in hot water"; on another, "the queen's power sweeps pinkly across the globe". For all the fine books on design and visual culture out there, very few are actually so well-written, and savor language so deftly.

Apart from the prose, probably the most striking aspect of the book is its visually driven style and structure. Stewart clearly worked closely with the fabulous graphic designer Oliver Munday to produce a fine, intensely collaborative piece of design: the book *works*, just like a well-designed lamp or chair, and is similarly thought-through down to the finest detail. The artful, meticulously executed cross-references, filling the margins of every page, may be the most impressive device. They're also the coolest updating of the commonplace genre: the book's contents, otherwise torn from a thousand sundry sources, are being constantly knitted back together, into configurations alternately fateful and absurd. This anarchic playfulness nicely counters the book's patient tour through the rainbow. Pink bleeds into red of course, but also, through "Nantucket red" and the "crisp aggression of the office", into the "gray queens" of Wall Street eight chapters later. At any given point, Stewart explodes the obviousness of the inherited categories, and keeps color unruly.

A last point: as the hard copy becomes an ever-rarer bird, one comes infrequently upon a book which is so unabashedly, satisfyingly ... booky. "Roy G. Biv" is a beautifully crafted object, inseparable from the pleasure of feeling its weighty squareness in your hands, turning its pages, scanning the subtle shifts in hue and font and topic, flipping upon the witty, minimalist full-color spreads. At the same time, this is not one of those scene-chewing kitchen-sink picture books, desperate to cram in every stock photograph it can. Munday is a disciplined stylist here, and Stewart's equal. Both registers, word and image, thrive not on noise but on exactitude and elegance; Munday's skewed icons harmonize perfectly with Stewart's eccentric classifications. The result is a lovely device for opening, reading, and wandering, and looks like little else I've seen. Let's hope these two pair up again, and soon.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read two different books dealing with color over the past few months - this one and The Secret Language of Color: Science, Nature, History, Culture, Beauty of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, & Violet by Arielle and Joann Eckstut.
I don't remember how I found Stewart's book, but the Eckstuts' was featured on NPR's Morning Edition back in early November. I checked both out of the local library - I'd recommend reading the dead tree version vs an ebook, unless you have a color tablet (would be a bit silly to read about about colors on a black & white device, no?)

Both books delve into the world of color from a sociological as well as scientific standpoint. They discussed the subtractive vs additive color methods, with subtractive being used with pigment and additive with light, as well as the historical discoveries that lead to these theories. The Eckstuts (and perhaps Stewart - to be honest, both books are kind of blending together in my mind at this point) also spent some time talking about dyes - how natural dyes like tyrian purple and cochineal have given way to artificial dyes (Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World is now on my ToRead list, thanks to this section). On the sociological side, sumptuary laws, colors as metaphors as well as the order in which color words are added to a language are all topics covered in these books.

I found them both informative and engaging, but noticed a bit of a UK slant to the Eckstuts' writing - while the US spelling of "color" and other "or/our" words was used, they mention sunflowers being most associated with southern France (while I would think of Kansas, or at least the Plains states) and there were one or two other phrases or terms that felt UK-centric.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed both books and would recommend them as at least a library read to anyone with a general interest in the history, culture and/or science of color.

[Am Y · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite the miniscule font (ouch, my eyes!), I couldn't quite hate this book. Here's why:

1) Creative presentation format
There's a sort of mindmap at the beginning of each chapter, whose points are then expanded upon within. Then in the actual text itself, certain words are underlined (just the way you'd find in a webpage - in colour too), and at the side of the page you can find extra "notes" related to those words. The notes either give you more info on the spot, or direct you to certain other related topics elsewhere in the book (with page numbers). In short, this was a book that read like the way a website worked! It was a little haphazard, but it worked for me! Just like in webpages, I liked the non-linear format and how everything appeared to be "linked" or connected somehow, like a network. Kudos to the author for managing to do this for a print book!

2) Creative use of colour
And why not? This is a book about colour after all. I found it very pleasing, visually, to get through. The coloured "links" (i.e. the underlined text) were what nailed it for me, since the colour of the underline gave it further meaning.

3) Some entertaining trivia snippets
Despite being Chinese myself, I didn't know that the word "青" actually referred to any colour between blue and green. (Here in Singapore we take it to refer to green, and there is no confusion about this.) In fact, I was skeptical at first and checked it up on Baidu, which apparently told me that the traditional use is indeed what the author claimed it was. So I did learn something new.

Things could've been better if the font were actually more readable instead of being microscopic. I also found a lot of the colour trivia given to be silly or useless. But I don't mind reading it if it's presented in an eye-candy or fun way... and it was.

[Hanna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Never judge a book by its cover color.

I bought ROY G. BIV: An Exceedingly Surprising Book About Color because I really liked the look of it and since I find color theory interesting I was sure that I was going to like the book. Oh, how wrong I was.
Unfortunately it turned out to be hard to read. Partly due to the infinitely small font (come on, I am only 32 years old and was squinting at the text like an 80 year old) and the shallow factoids. Some stories would be interesting to read more about, but Stewart only keeps them fragmentary. I was annoyed by the cross referencing at the sidebars, which didn't contain actual information, but only referred the reader to other parts of the book.
I wanted to write a book rife with that deep sense of "Aha!" that you get when you finally unravel something that has puzzled you since childhood., writes Stewart in her introduction. The Aha-effect never set in though. She goes on: In the end I wanted you to tell you my favorite stories about colors.
To me though, a story is more than just a short paragraph containing a bit of information that might or might not be true.
I stopped reading half-way through as I lost interest in the rest of the colors (this is probably the most depressing sentence I've ever "uttered").

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

ARC from Netgalley

Lots in interesting factoids about color, some of them familiar while others were new to me. The layout of the book is graphic and vivid which is good, but the sometimes-eye-searing vibrancy of the colors (on my computer screen) and the habit of referencing related facts from a different color group (usually by way of demonstrating cultural differences) was disorienting and, at times, confusing. This was probably made worse because I was reading this ARC electronically which made flipping back and forth frustrating in a way that it would not be were I to be holding a physical book. Likewise the electronic version displays only a single page at a time, which does much to undercut what I assume was meant to be the strong-impact subsection title pages.

In the electronic ARC form I'd give this book a 2.5 (I use GoodRead's tool tips literally, so that would put this somewhere between "ok" and "I liked it") but I suspect that if I had read a paper ARC copy my rating would be a solid 3 (or even 4). Should I have the chance to explore this book in its physical form I will update my review.

[Christine Rebbert · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected to LOVE this book, because I have always been a big fan of "color"; I interact with color in my card-making and I tend to describe things in either than Crayola or Stampin' Up color names, not just plain old "red" or "blue". The idea of the book is great -- how color varies in different cultures and over time; each chapter deals with one particular of the ROY G BIV colors, plus other "special" colors outside of the rainbow like pink, brown, gray, black, and white. I have picked up and put down this book a number of times (on my third renewal from the library) and finally realized I just wasn't going to finish it. The print is way too small, which makes it just hard to read. And there are these "cross-references" in the outermost edges of each page which pick up something from that page and direct you to a related page further on, OR earlier, in the book. With several of those for each page, it was almost like reading everything twice (in teeny-tiny print) by the time you dealt with all the cross-references. After a while, it just got to be too tedious and too much like work. I guess I'll just continue to enjoy color and not philosophize too much about it.

[Jennifer Sundt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pleasant ride into the history of color. At first I thought it would be too dry of a read for me to handle, but it wasn't. Jude Stewart has a great wit, so the read ended up being quick and painless.

After a while, however, her color-coded footnotes - really references to other parts of the book - became a little annoying, because as I completed more and more of the book, the references were increasingly already ones I'd read. And, the author assuming you wouldn't necessarily read in a linear fashion (the way I did), those references would pop up again and again if there was anything that remotely had to do with that same piece of information. So, I ended up going Yes, I know the reason Chinese men don't wear green hats. Yes, I know. Yes, I know. I read that part of the book already!

That being said, one could I guess just ignore those color coded footnotes, but that's not what my brain wanted to do. So I think that in the end, I would have rathered she did not have those color footnotes after all. Or if she needed to have them, she could have added new information so that there was a point to my eyes being drawn to the side of the page.

[Karyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a fetish for color, so I was pleased to learn curious new (to me) anecdotes and facts from this book.

But from a design perspective, each page was trying to hard to be an internet page with "hyperlink" sidebars--a book is a book, so it was a little silly to have static "links" that ultimately repeated themselves. Better to just have sidebars with information once rather than chasing each "link" repetitively throughout the book, with the result of scattering concentration on the body text, which isn't a good thing. Also, the text was a bit on the small side. A poorly designed book that is difficult to see, concentrate upon, and read means losing potential readers. There is a better way to design this book to convey the information in a surprising and fun way without alienating people (or sacrificing aesthetics).

[Emma Bell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting book. I feel like I learned a lot of trivia, but I have two issues. One, it needed to be at least twice as long. While I was reading, I kept picking up my iPhone to consult Wikipedia and find out more about the shorter blurbs. I suppose you could view this as a good thing, as the book definitely inspired me to seek out more knowledge, but i would've appreciated more depth of information. Secondly, I found the page references on the side of each page to be very repetitive and I think they would be much more helpful if they were actual footnotes that added little tidbits of info relating to the subject matter on the page. Otherwise, Roy G Biv is a very intelligently written, exceedingly fascinating read.

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so hoping and expecting to love this book and it fell short. I was expecting a postmodern text that was culturally, philosophically, ethically, or textually challenging, but found that ROY G. BIV was not intended to serve that purpose. And so, naturally, I was disappointed. You will most certainly enjoy this read if you are looking for an encyclopedic coffee table book that enlightens you in the area of particular colors and their cultural and historical significance.

[Gracie Guagenti · Rating 4 out of 5]

An informational text about color. Colors are broken down in each "chapter" of this book. It would be good in an art class for older students. A teacher could use this book to read excerpts aloud, but it is far too lengthy for anything other than a reference. I liked the excerpt about "What rhymes with purple" where the author tells the reader how Orange and Silver have no rhymes in natural English...but Purple actually has two.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun little romp through the rainbow with a smorgasborg of tasty tidbits about the world of color. Not very in depth, but it doesn't pretend to be. All sorts of interesting trivia in an unusual cross referenced format. A quick read, the sort of thing you can put down for the slightest distraction and pick back up without losing your train of thought. The author has a pleasant conversational tone that's crisp and clear and consistent throughout.

[Cris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reads better as a reference rather than a straight up nonfiction work. It is full of fascinating facts about color and the history of the meanings of various colors. It would probably drive linear thinkers nuts, though, because the info is cross referenced back and forth throughout the book. I think it is great.

[Krzysztof Mathews · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun and interesting in places, but it read more as a sort of grab back of facts rather than as any sort of more substantial study of color or it's role in any given time, place or culture. Amusing anecdotes and some curious trivia, but not quite as substantial as I had hoped.

[Summer · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF - visually very busy and vignettes are VERY short. Great for casual browsing and picking up interesting tidbits, but many readers will find themselves running to Google for more information on many entries.

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good and fun book about colour. It was a pretty quick read, a good-looking book for people who want a quick overview of colour theory and a bit of history and quirks of various major colours. Interesting.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the way the way the book was laid out in the color spectrum (the title stands for "Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet") and all the quirky facts and trivia about each color. But in the end, it was more flash than substance.