The Albers App – a designer’s essential learning aid

Josef Alber’s Interaction of Color was first published by Yale University in 1963 as a teaching aid for artists, designers, instructors and students. The handbook presented Alber’s unique ideas of colour experimentation.

With over a quarter of a million copies sold in its various editions since 1963, Interaction of Color still remains an essential educational resource and many of the ideas form the roots of day-to-day activity in the creative industry.

To mark the 50th anniversary of this masterpiece, a new interactive edition has been launched for iPad. Here at Mzuri we couldn’t wait to get out our iPads out and download the new app, and we’re pleased to say it does not disappoint. Full of innovative features, you can understand the book’s ideas, view the plates and gain a better understanding of how colour works, you can experiment yourself and even create and share your own designs.

Whilst Albers original text is very technical, due to the nature of the ideas which are difficult to put across in print, the app adds an element of creativity and interaction which for us design types makes it all the more visual and tactile.

The colour wheel, itself beautiful and a design delight, allows you to pull swatches from the colour palette, place them into a design and then lets you refine your selection. You can then export your favourite swatches complete with the RGB values and even open your plates and palettes in your preferred design software!

This new app is a fantastic and invaluable addition to our toolkit and the fact that Albers insight is now available at the touch of a screen and integrated with our software is a very exciting development that we can’t wait to put into use.