LA Bantam - Colour Description Part III

As readers of this blog know there are many colour and textual variants of the 28 Bantam Publications books with text covers. I keep finding new ones every few months. The latest is book 23 - Tarzan in the Forbidden City. I knew of two variants, now a third, strong blue/light yellowish green has been added.

In part I of this series I discussed the colour system that I use - ISCC-NSB. Below is the description and number of the seven colours used in the Bantam books. The colours are used in all the possible (ten) combinations.

     primary                                       secondary

strong blue 178                               vivid yellow 82
strong yellowish green 131              light blue 181
                                                      light grey 264
                                                      light orange yellow 70
                                                      light yellowish green 135

The current count of the ten colour combinations is 56:

strong blue/light blue   8
strong blue/light gray   5
strong blue/light yellowish green   3
strong blue/light orange yellow   6
strong blue/vivid yellow   5
strong yellowish green/light blue  10
strong yellowish green/light gray   3
strong yellowish green/light yellowish green   5
strong yellowish green/light orange yellow   8
strong yellowish green/vivid yellow   3

Here are examples of the three most popular.

LA Bantam - Colour Description Part II

Part I described the ISCC-NBS Colour Description Method. Here we'll look at some of the other colours used on the books published by Bantam Publications of Los Angeles. There is an obvious difficulty with these designations because I'm using the colours on a web site which reflect the calibration of my computer. But this is not meant to be a rigorous effort.

The first book is The Lone Ranger. The green is a strong yellowish green (131) as was the green in part I. This web site does not have samples for the grays but it is likely light (264) or medium gray (265).

The next book is Little Known Facts About Well Known People. The two colours are vivid yellow (82) and strong blue (178).

Favorite Poems has the strong yellowish green (131) plus light blue (181).

LA Bantam - Colour Description - ISCC-NBS Method

Whether as part of a formal bibliographic description or in a dealer's catalogue adequately describing a book's colours is always a challenge. The obvious problem with a written description is that the words are likely to be interpreted differently by everyone reading the description. The Internet combined with simple scanning and printing technology has made the job potentially easier but hasn't solved the problem completely. Different scanners, printers and screens will reproduce colours differently.

The solution is to use a standard vocabulary of colours that is understandable and accessible. There is one that has been recommended - the Inter-Society Color Council-National Bureau of Standards (ISCC-NBS) method. This method divides colours into ranges designated by 28 hue names - red, orange, violet etc. The hue names are then modified indicating variation in lightness (value) or saturation (chroma). The result is 267 colour blocks. These can be further subdivided up to 5 million colours. Here is a useful site that provides examples of the blocks and a more detailed description of the method.

Each block is identified by a name and number so a colour can be easily designated and referenced. I'll use a LA Bantam book to demonstrate. In earlier posts I've described the book below as green/tan but I've seen what I've called tan described as orange and yellow. Using the colour block method the colours become light orange yellow (70) and strong yellowish green (131). The cover was scanned on an HP scanjet 2200c which is nearly ten years old and on my screen both colours do not match exactly with the book. The strong yellowish green is close but the light orange yellow is darker and redder on the screen and the actual colour is not well reproduced. Reference to the colour block would eliminate confusion as to the correct colours.