The Color Index along with its siblings are by far the most referenced handbook in my collection. I use this in conjunction with my Pantone books. The possibilities are endless. No shelf should be without it!

This book is great for people who get stuck in a rut of using the same color schemes time after time. Really made me think outside the box and want to try harder to use different color schemes. Provides CMYK versions of all his color palettes and has many to choose from. Great book to keep next to your computer for when you get stuck about color ideas.

If you need help selecting colors for graphics, logos, or PowerPoint presentations this book is for you. It gives hundreds of wonderful color combinations. I highly recommend this book.

I am a graphic designer. I don't use this book every day, but I have used it on several occasions when I'm stuck and need something to get me started. The color combinations are fresh and up-to-date; there are so many that I always find one I can use.

My sister-in-law is also a graphic designer, and I gave her this book with confidence. The cover is vinyl, not paper, and the quality is very good, so I don't worry about it falling apart any time soon.

Not to take anything away from this book, but there aren't a lot of color schemes that I would personally use. Maybe a few here and there, but definitely not enough that I would purchase this one again if I had to. But it does assist you in kicking around some other ideas. Not a bad book, but not my favorite either.

this is a must have book for any graphic designer / web designer!!!

It's been helpfull, and explains little things that no one ever explained to me. Good buy.

This book is a great resource for those who sometimes have trouble putting together a good color scheme (and who doesn't have those troubles from time to time?). It's true that the colors won't look exactly the same as they do in the book. But this is still a great source for inspiration when you're stuck. You can use the formulas in the book as a starting place, and tweak them as necessary to make them work for you. I keep this book at my desk, and I and others that I work with refer to it often.

Fun, inspiring, portable, informative, usefull.

With over 1000 color combos grouped into minimally-versatile-titled chapters, concise brainstorming and color usage tips scattered around, and some carefully thought-out touches, this book is meant as a friendly companion who provides fuel for creativity to color users of all types as they explore color combinations for their specific projects, and it proved quite usefull to my design work. The color combos picked show that the author is a keen observer of color trends, as most of them can be applied handsomely to real work.

Obviously targeted towards beginners, it can provide ideeas even to experienced professionals. This is a book that pays out handsomely the more you spend time with it, as it mysteriously manages to benefically influence the color-centers in your brain :)

The book's strong points easily outweight it's few flaws -- color formula inaccuracy (you'll never get the right hues on your screen, use your eyes instead), some "useless" color-combos (meaning I can't figure out ANY style of project where they could be reasonably used), and obsolete info regarding color usage on the web. Some more information on color-theory is also a thing to be desired. Yeah, and don't expect to color like Raphael, Bruegel or Miro :) - even if the samples are provided, they look nothing like the real thing.

Although I feel I somewhat outgrew it and don't use it as often as before, this is one of the books I carry with me everyday at work.

this book is really a manual for me, i keep it with me at all times and just look at it sometimes, the colors provide inspiration, the combinations take me to other places, the make me think, they are a true inspiration and a great tool to find solutions when you're stock, take it from a Graphic design student, you'll love to have this book. For color theory not so good you might want to get something that covers color theory in detail, this is just an index as said on the tittle. but even if you know nothing about color at all, you will still find it amazingly useful!

I love the resource this book provides in the creative and graphic aspect of my work. Designers of all media should have this book handy. I don't let it go too far,CAUTION: YOUR FRIENDS WILL STEAL THIS BOOK.
Review every book you read- authors deserve your opinions, not just elitist critics.

I just got my first graphic design job three months ago and once I got this book both my employer and I noticed a huge difference in my work. The most helpful thing about this book is the color coding for HTML, RGB and CYMK but aside from the codes the color combinations are very helpful, especially for a beginning graphic designer. Well worth the cover price, and the turtleback cover will ensure the binding's integrity after much usage and for many years to come.

This is the worst color book I ever seen. I dont reccomend to anyone who makes grapic designing. Print quaility is the most important thing for color books then any other kind of books. This book has awful print and paper quality. You are not going to see any difference between the other colors on the same page if you buy it.

book on time, but cover was dirty and smagged, so being directly from amazon is disappointing.

As an up and coming Graphic Designer this book helps by taking a lot of the guess-work out of color theory. The layout is consistent and I have not run into any problems with the CMYK formulas looking different on paper. Highly recommended.

I love the "Color Index" by Jim Krause. It is a wonderful resource for those times when you feel you've used up all your ideas about color combinations. Originally written for graphic artists, it can certainly be used by crafters. I especially like the chapter headings (Quiet colors, Active colors, Rich colors)and use the schematics to match my papers and yarns, and to find other combos I wouldn't have dreamed of using. Highly recommended.

I am a small publisher (currently VERY small, i.e. a one and a half person outfit), so I do most publishing tasks myself. Even though I have a good graphic designer, I like to come up with the design and color schemes myself, and let him play around with them to get the best results.
Actually, before I worked with him, I had first one absolutely awful designer, and then another mediocre one. The first one designed my first book cover based on my design specs, which was OK, but she chose the colors, and I went along with her, not knowing any better. The results were pretty bad - the cover was way too dark, and some of the writing actually got lost in it because it was so dark.
That's when I switched over to my second designer, and picked up this gem of a book at the same time. I personally chose the color combos for the second and third books based on the combinations given in the book. Now, the design was basically the same for the first, second, and third covers because they were all part of the same set, but the colors make all the difference. I actually have buyers telling me how attractive the colors on the second and third books are, which is pretty amazing considering that they are just students' workbooks and cover design is usually not considered very important by my audience. I have since used this book for two more covers in the series with excellent results.
In short, if you are looking for inspiration for truly super color combinations, and want to see how the colors will actually look in print before the printing takes place, I highly recommend this book!

The Color Index book was an outstanding guide for me as a beginner in fashion design. I used the book to coordinate different fabric colors and was able to create one-of-a-kind designs. It was also an excellent source for interior design when we decided to paint our house. It helped me to understand what colors were needed to accent the room and be eye-catching. Great purchase for me!

This book would be very useful to a Graphic Artist.

I'll admit it. I'm not the best person to set up a colour pallette, so I've found this book to be very useful. It is well organized, espeically with all the swatches printed to the edge of the page for easy reference. As it boasts, it works well for both print and web, and for helping to color manage your monitor. I can't say I'm a fan of the graphics Krause uses as his examples, but that isn't the focal point of the book.

The back cover reads: 'An abundance of creativity--at a glance' and I think it is safe to agree with that statement. It sure is one quick reference book; no frills to divert the task at hand...picking the right #@!* colour!

This book is made to last, small & easy to carry around and contains a superb 'section by section' collection of colour combos that you would find hard to think up yourself, combos that work and cover an array of different 'feels'. Combine this with a 'process colour guide' and you are set. No complaints.

This book is brilliant and comprehensive in concept and design. As a jewelry designer and artist, I couldn't imagine NOT having it! It also provides excellent inspiration when my own is lacking. Great compact size, nice color reproduction. A bargain. Highly recommended.

The Color Index is the low-cost version of Pantone's color books and one I recommend to all my clients. Why, you ask -- well if you think about it the book was printed in CMYK so the color are fairly accurate to what you would see when you go to press also the price is right. You're not spending hundreds of dollars on swatch books from Pantone.

This book also gives you great color solutions to answer every little color problem you can think. The one draw back is the colors sway a little from the colors when viewed on the web, naturally. It would be great if the the author/publisher had a companion site that shows how the colors look on the web.

One great use I have gotten out of this book is to leave the book with my clients so that they may choose the colors that appeal to them. I don't feel too bad if the book comes up missing. It couldn't be as worse as a missing Pantone book (expensive). The Color Index is a great solution.

I'd heard about this guide on websites devoted to scrapbooking, and when I finally tracked it down, I almost didn't buy it. I looked at it and thought, "What the heck?" It is pages and pages of color combinations, arranged according to color groupings, with suggested "moods," like "retro." So what? I thought.

However, my respect for the work of those who'd recommended it overcame my initial doubts. As a designer in paper arts, I tend to get into my color ruts, and choose the same basic color combos. "Color Index" has helped me break out of my rut in a couple of different ways.

Sometimes, when I just don't feel inspired, I'll simply sit down with the book and page through it, tabbing color combinations I find interesting or appealing. Later, when I'm working in my studio, I'll take a look at the tabbed combos for ideas I can use.

Other times, I may know of one color I want to use for a design, but am stuck for accents to use. I'll take the paper I've chosen, page through the combinations and take into consideration those "moods" as well. I've discovered many combinations of color I'd never have considered otherwise, like tan with deep burgundy, accented by bright turquoise. Sounds like a bizarre mix, but it worked for that project, which was eventually published by a major scrapbooking magazine.

The book isn't flashy like other design books, but I've found it to be a dependable while inspiring workhorse in my studio.

I purchased this little vinyl-covered book at my favorite artists supply store about a year ago and have never regretted it for a moment. As a jewelry designer I find it inspiring for helping me get over a color-scheme block when I need another tone or "voice" in a piece; I've used it when deciding what colors would work well together in a recent bathroom remodeling job; I've given copies of it to friends who make clothing, purses and pottery. I've carried it with me to wholesale bead shows and used it to check for interesting color combos on the spot. Its division into color themes .. each with two, three and four-color formulas makes it easy to find something to match a general "feeling" or look .. intense, cool, muted, Urban Chic, rich, neutral, earthtone, etc. Each color formula is then presented in a design, for a visual that gives you a quick idea of what the scheme looks like in use. There are many additional advantages to this little book; not being a graphic designer, I can't speak to the "potential for error" the author mentions, but it feels like a minor issue compared to all the positive things this book has to offer.

This little book is terrific for quick inspiration and interesting color combinations. Not accurate for print reproduction, but a really good place to start when you want to try some new color combinations.

It's one of those books that is always in arm's reach...and has more than paid for itself.

I just received _Color Index_ in the mail yesterday and really enjoyed browsing through all the color combinations. There is a lot of information packed into such a small book. My only complaint about the book is that the author doesn't give hexadecimal numbers for any of the colors except the ones in the Web-safe palette. For those of us who sometimes choose to use nonWeb-safe colors for Web design, adding the hexadecimal values for all colors would have been useful.

Color Index has been a god sent for me as a design student. When the colors just are not working well together or I'm having a difficulty making up my mind I turn to this book and it has saved me on more then one assignment. My dear friend who has been in the design business for over 10 years suggested it, and she also uses if frequently. It's also one of the first books I suggest to students just starting out.

I bought this book along time ago and I have been using it forever. It is a great book because not only it produces great colors it also tells you the RGB and CMYK values. You don't have to frantically look for the colors in your computer you can just enter the numbers and get the colors right away.

This is a wonderful book to keep as a reference for any type of graphic design project. The small, but extremely useful, book size allows you to keep the book handy on your desk at all times. Whether you use the book for color inspiration or to pull color combinations (up to 4 colors) from, it's a great tool. The color listings are in CMYK and RGB including a small section of Browser Safe colors in the back of the book.

Although not a professional, this guide helped me with understanding color how to deal with printers in that medium. Thanks!

This book provides a designer with a fabulous resource for generating color schemes/combinations quickly and easily. In that respect, it inspires.

However, the author provides recipes (CMYK and RGB values) "checked for accuracy", never stating on what media those values may be valid. He then excuses himself by saying that "the potential for error exists". The implication that a set of CMYK values is in any way "accurate" beyond the inks and papers used for this particular publication is so, eh, mid-1990s. A true, but technically more challenging statement of the color values should have been made with device independent Lab values. Then anyone with Adobe Photoshop, for example, could reproduce the samples on his or her own media. This is, in fact, what Pantone does.

And aspiring web designers beware! The author clearly has little but old and second-hand knowledge of the facts of color on the web. He describes the anachronistic "browser safe" colors as if most computer users still had old 8-bit (256 color) monitors, and as if there was ever color consistency across them. In those bad old days we fought dithering (the "speckles") in solid fills by choosing from amongst the 216 colors Macs and PC monitors had in common.

Those days, except for some dusty intranets here and there, are gone. deceased. expired. However, neither then nor now could we count on consistency on our viewers' monitors--unless we can strongarm our audience into calibrating and profiling them.

These particular rants aside (the writer sighs benignly), the color examples are truly wonderful, useful, and inspiring.

In short, fabulous for samples, but not for accuracy of data.

i purchased all the books in the index series, and they are all helpful, but this one is by far the most useful of them all! it is easy to go through, i love how the color combinations are separated by effect. my favorite thing of all is that it's so durable. being hard on books like i am, i only wish that more people constructed their books this way. a must have for anyone who works with color!

Tasteful use of color can make or break a web or print design, and this book is an invaluable tool in that endeavor. At first glance it might seem overpriced for nothing but a collection of color combinations, but you'll find yourself turning to it again and again for inspiration.

The color schemes are organized by category ("Quiet", "Natural", "Restrained Chic", etc.), and each is presented in three different ways - as a set of plain vertical bars, as a homogenous pattern, and used in a simple iconic design. Throughout the book are brief passages on different color techniques ("Unexpected Color", "Muting", etc.), which help stimulate brainstorming and experimentation.

The book is well-made, too - it's printed on sturdy paper, conveniently sized, and thoughtfully bound in a waterproof vinyl cover. Stick it in your pocket or backpack and take it anywhere.

A great practical purchase (or gift!) for any graphic designer.

This is a terrific book for the novice or the veteran user, whether you are into web design or vector / raster graphics. These ready-made combinations are categorized and provide the settings for CYMK, RGB and Hex.

Being "color challenged" I appreciated the combinations. Having a short attention span, I appreciated the brevity of the book. The vinyl cover is a nice touch making it a durable resource.

This book is awesome! Finished the whole volume in just one day and had a beautiful splash screen done within minutes! I recommend this to any one involved in graphic design. My only gripe is that the colors on palettes for each chapters were not labeled with the corresponding CMYK and RGB values to allow the reader to pick colors while of course applying the color theories discussed, e.g., analogous, split complementary, triad, etc. I had to compare the colors of the palettes from the color swatches to get the color values. I could have rated this book five (5) stars if only the colors from the palettes were labeled.