Chromophilia: The Design World's Passion for Colour

The history of colour in design practice is an overlooked area in design history. Historical research on colour has been divided into aesthetic and cultural studies by art educators, curators, art historians,and cultural theorists, and into work on dye production and distribution by historians of technology and the chemical industry. This special issue of the Journal of Design History reviews the state of the field, and presents five essays that open the doors on to new approaches to the history of ‘Colour and Design’. Recent research shows colour to be part of the broader field of creative practice, with its own trajectories, objectives and outcomes. The history of colour and design allows researchers to bridge the gap between the study of Modernism and the study of modern industry, as colour provides a platform for examining the give-and take between these two realms and to the transition to the digital age.