Interaction of Color

The Interaction of Color app brings Josef Albers’s masterwork to the digital realm.

Originally published in 1963, Interaction of Color is considered one of the most influential books on color and the classic design school text book that introduced generations of students, artists, and designers to Albers’s unique ideas of color.

Albers’s personal teaching style was not to mix colors in paint, as color mixing was not the same as understanding color theory and could distract focus from the colors themselves. Instead, Albers had his students use swatches of found paper for their studies. Our innovation was to recreate the studies digitally to behave as if they were made of cut paper.

What resulted is a digital experience that enables users to explore color theory and experiment fluidly with the studies, all within the parameters originally set out by Albers. Over 60 interactive studies are available for users to create, save, and export their palettes and final designs, as well as the full text of the original book, and video commentary by experts and practitioners.