I'm ordering the book, which has a promising subtitle "An Empirical Theory .. ."

There are 2 books by Albers called Interaction of Color--the Yale paperback and the amazing silk screen print edition by Ives-Sillman. A good art library will have the amazing edition. About 8 years ago someone contructed a computer-interactive version of Albers which resembles the color-interaction effects on the Purves website.

I wrote about these matters in the chapter on color and information in Envisioning Information. It is generally the case that design elements interact, which in turn sometimes suggests that local optimization of particular design elements may result in global pessimization of all design elements. This very issue has plagued interface design, as the menu bar department optimizes their design, the desktop department optimizes their design, and so on--adding up to an over-active mess on the interface as a whole.

Thank you Kindly Contributor Sonke Johnsen, with whom I would like to discuss scuba diving sometime.

-- Edward Tufte

You won't regret getting the book. The idea is simple and obvious in retrospect and the supporting data are amazing. He's not a clear writer, but the figures are so good that you can almost skip the text.

The last time I checked, the electronic version of "interaction of color" was only for Macs. Do you know if there is a PC version?

sonke

-- sonke johnsen