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Great book "Tasteful Color Combinations" - not even available on Amazon

January 29, 2009 · by Jan Schultink
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Found hidden away on a shelf in the book shop of the Tel Aviv Museum: “Tasteful Color Combinations” by Naomi Kuno. It is not even available on Amazon, that’s why I have trouble finding a good web link to it.

The book contains 455 color schemes (with detailed RGB  and CMYK codes), organized in 14 chapters each with a different mood. (“Nostalgic and melanchology”, “humanistic and natural” to name two). The first edition was published in Japan in 2004, and the English translation is not always perfect, adding to the charm of the book.

Some examples of colors schemes available (exact quotations from the book):

The colors of 111 below as an example:

I have used this book a number of times as a source of inspiration for finding color schemes for seed-level technology startups that need help developing their very first fund raising presentation. (Other techinques to find a good color scheme can be found here).

Here are the full details of the book in case you would like to try to order it:

Tasteful Color Combinations by Naome Kuno and FORMS Inc. / Color Intelligence Institute Published by Page One Publishing Private Limited, Singapore ISBN 978-981-245-228-3

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1 comment

Jeromy Timmer2009-01-30 14:47:00
This book looks fantastic. Another great tool for finding color combinations is Kuler (

I discuss the use of it in this post: (

Where you just find (or create) color palettes that look appealing with Kuler, this book looks like it guides you a little more in getting the mood and feel you need. Very Cool.