THE COLOUR DICTIONARY

Which colours do people consider ‘exotic’, which seem ‘glamorous’ in their eyes and which colours are ‘spirited’? The colour dictionary answers all these questions and translates 360 adjectives into colour compositions linked to the RAL DESIGN System.

the_colour_dictionary_book1THE COLOUR DICTIONARY
THE COLOURFULNESS OF THE WORDS
COLOUR MARKETING AND COLOUR AESTHETICS • COLOUR IN CONTEXT OF TERMS

The colour dictionary is an indispensable work tool for advertisers, architects, interior designers, designers, professional painters and all those who are fascinated by the world of colour. Axel Venn, Professor of Colour Design and Trendscouting at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hildesheim, undertook a scientific study where he asked more than 60 participants to link various colours with various words, from comfortable to uneasy, from paradisiacal to useful, from noble to worthless and from trendy to archaic.
For each of the 360 adjectives, the book displays 49 colour images and the respective colour scale in RAL DESIGN System colours. This is what makes Professor Venn’s colour dictionary different from other colour theory books, which usually only list one colour for each concept. The colour dictionary gives the user room to play with and opens up a whole range of possibilities for making colour statements.
Authors: Professor Axel Venn and Janina Venn-Rosky; editor: Dr. Wolf D. Karl, RAL gGmbH; published by Callwey-Verlag. Bilingual (German and English), 864 pages, approx. 20,000 images, 24 x 26 cm, hardcover. With large poster.

Order Information
ISBN 978-3-7667-1825-9
amazon.co.uk
RAL
Callwey (publisher)

The ten colour-analytical chapters were developed with the intention to create a tremendously stimulating overview of characteristics of style and trend worlds, sentiments and feelings, functional and factual worlds, impressions of value, psychological sensitivities etc.
For us it was no question of the selectivity of terms, because language is simultaneously playful, absurd, intricate, ambiguous, polyphonic, but also profound, elegant and it can be explicit as well as suggestive.

In areas where it seemed advisable to us, we selected polarising terms. In some cases this could only be achieved with certain vagueness because of the subject matter or necessary economic limitations. The figures behind the letter pair illustrate the polarity, as for example “A 03 – modern“ against “B 03 – old German�.
Equally significant as the contrariness of word meanings is the coloured and formal distinction to words sounding quite similar: What we understand by “grand�, “luxurious“ or “exotic“, is miles apart when considering colour spectrum aspects. Therefore this analysis also helps considering with more differentiation what has previously been vague.

The odd pages feature the 49 coloured word meanings of those partaking in the colours-and-signs experiment. These were put in a chromatic order. Subsequently every single colour drawing and with it the entire colour field was analysed and translated into RAL colour values. This resulted in a quantity analysis of hues, which is weighted in the pie chart according to their percentage. The bar chart below presents an analytic-chromatic experience, which was translated into the adjacent RAL values. Consequently, verification of colour values independent of the print is ensured.
The merely semantic interpretation required a semiotic addition in order to achieve a well rounded overall picture. The four drawings each presented with their grey-scale values convey prototypical impressions of the conclusively presented design characteristics of a term.
The “thumbprint� of the respective colour term, which has some kind of compass function for the reader when browsing through the book, is located on the right side of odd pages.

CUTE

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The colour range of small prettied up things is suitable for children. Between burlesque and bridal bouquet.

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Cute things are mainly coloured with warm, pure shades, rather than with blended nuances.

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Every time it is about the small things, dabs, dots, circles appear and generate a little motion.

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Quaint, comical, small, and naive is the interpretation of the adjective “cute�. Here, colour appears in diminutive: playfully giggling and more than just a little kitschy, always touching and always seemingly artificial.


COLOURFUL WORLDS OF TERMS (Commentary)

How grey is “functional�, how green is “natural� and how red is “sweet�? These questions meet with incomprehension among logic-oriented Western Europeans. What is this child-like re-definition of language by the use of colours all about? Why do words with a clear semantic meaning have to be painted? The answer is simple: because the meaning of words is not clear and it never will be. How does “priceless“ smell, how does “cocky� feel and what does “repulsive� look like? The attempt to answer these questions makes clear that our inculcated insensitiveness and inexpressiveness blocks the objective analysis of the meaning of words and their semiotic contexts. Because it is a fact: We know more than what we are able to express by means of language.
colour_dictionaryWe have a differentiated as well as an affectively shaped notion of the meaning of words and terms, however, we often lack the tools to express these ideas to make them comprehensible for others. To simplify matters we abstain from this implied wealth of knowledge and content ourselves with the vague validity of the written or pronounced word instead.
With this book Axel Venn, the relentless intermediary between the worlds of aesthetic and cognitive awareness, addresses the two points described above. On the one hand, he explored how man sensually apprehends language. Thus, he has raised and analysed the treasure of implicit knowledge, the embodied knowledge, which is slumbering within all of us underneath the surface of conceptual knowledge. In doing so, he uses knowledge that cannot be fully communicated by using words and is, hence, to be classified into the field of aesthetic cognition. Consequently, aesthetics here serve the acquisition of cognition by means of sensual perception and affective processing. On the other hand, Axel Venn consequentially translated the cognition thus acquired into an aesthetic form of expression, an expressive language of colour that everyone can intuitively understand. Thereby, he made implicit knowledge understandable and impartable, and illustrated the diversity of our world of notions and meanings that lies behind language in a way that is understandable for everybody. Lingering doubts expressed by raising principle objections that everything was only subjective, not accessible or unscientific, does not do justice to the dynamics of our complex world in which we live.
Accordingly, the claim to validity asserted by the aesthetic expressive presentation of colour compositions does not relate to any sort of ultimate truth, but rather to the subjective genuineness of a word. Here, subjectively true is what was apprehended through sensuous experience. Consequently, subjective perception equals the recovery of diffuse experiences or the discovery of new findings within the sensual experience of a colour composition.

The present encyclopaedia can therefore be used in two different ways:
- Either as a source of inspiration to gain an alternative access to the diversity of our world within the scope of an exciting tour across the colour-term-assignments,
- or as an aesthetic reference book to include the subtle differences of words and their meanings when addressing specific questions.
It is certainly true what Ludwig Wittgenstein already expressed in an aphorism: “The limitations of my language are the limitations of my world.�
Well then, enjoy the colourful read.

Dr. Björn Stüwe
Stuewe Management Consulting, Langenfeld