Long before mood boards, Sanzo Wada was building them by hand. A painter, costume designer and color researcher who founded the Japan Standard Color Association in 1927, Wada spent the early 1930s assembling a six-volume study of color pairings. This pocket-size reprint gathers 348 of his combinations — two, three and four colors at a time — drawn from the palette of Taisho and early Showa Japan.
Some pairings are quiet and earthy, others startlingly modern, and every swatch is listed with its CMYK values so it can move straight from the page into a design file. It has become a quiet classic on the desks of illustrators, designers, textile artists and anyone who has ever stared too long at a paint chip.
By Sanzo Wada (1883–1967)
Published by Seigensha Art Publishing, Kyoto
Softcover, 352 pages, full color
Size: approx. 4.1 × 5.8 in. (10.5 × 14.8 cm)
348 color combinations with CMYK values
Language: Japanese and English
ISBN: 978-4861522475
Color may vary slightly depending on screen settings.
