Coming Soon: Josef Albers Interaction of Color iPad app

Mike Rankin

In 1963, Josef Albers’s pioneering resource on color theory, Interaction of Color, was published by Yale University Press. Fifty years and a quarter million sold copies later, the book is widely regarded as a masterwork in art education. And now to celebrate its 50th anniversary, the book is being released later this summer as an iPad app. 

The app includes the entire text of the book, and most of the original plates from the 1963 edition. It also allows you to create, save, and export color palettes for use in other software. Here’s the full list of features:

• Full text and plate commentary.
• The original set of 140 color studies, including the “flaps” and moving pieces that have made the studies so captivating to generations of students.
• Over 60 interactive plates and studies that allow you to experiment with color and find your own solutions to Albers’s famous problems.
• Detailed discussion of key principles, including the relativity of color; light intensity and brightness; how to make one color look like two or two colors look like one; transparency; after-image; film and volume colors; color temperature and humidity; and vibrating and disappearing boundaries.
• The ability to create, save, and export your final designs and palettes into your favorite design software.
• A beautiful new color palette tool.
• Archival video of Albers in the classroom, and audio of the renowned teacher talking you through a special exercise.
• Original video commentary by experts explaining Albers’s principles, making even the most challenging problems easy to understand.
• Interviews with leading designers and artists explaining how they use color in their professional practices.
• The free download allows you to sample Chapter 10, including accompanying text, video commentary, two interactive plates, and the palette tool. The complete app, featuring the full text, 125 plates, 60 interactive studies, and over two hours of video commentary, is available for $9.99 through an in-app purchase. 

The app isn’t for sale yet, but you can sign up to be notified when it beccomes available.

You can learn more about the life and work of Josef Albers in a series of videos produced by Dwell Magazine.