About

Sanzo Wada

Born on 3 March 1883 in Ikuno, Hyōgo Prefecture, Sanzo Wada studied painting in Tokyo under Kuroda Seiki and graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1904. From 1907 to 1915 he studied Western painting and the decorative arts in Europe, mostly in France.

A professor of design at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts from 1932 to 1944, he published the six volumes of 配色総鑑 (Haishoku Sōkan) in 1933–1934: more than a thousand color combinations. In 1945 he reorganized the Japan Standard Color Association into the Japan Color Research Institute and became its chairman. His costumes for Gate of Hell (1953) won him the Academy Award for costume design. He died in Tokyo on 22 August 1967.

Where these colors come from

Assorti’s 159 colors and 348 combinations come from the Haishoku Sōkan, published in Tokyo by Hakubisha. They are the work’s best-known selection, reissued in Japan in 2010 by Seigensha. The original volumes can be read online at the National Diet Library of Japan.

The numbers come from the open work of Dain M. Blodorn Kim, taken further by Matt DesLauriers, who fixed errors and converted every CMYK value to RGB with color profiles (U.S. Web Coated SWOP v2 to sRGB).

The English names are the ones printed with the colors, with a few digitization typos corrected. The French names are our translations, keeping the established pigment names: terre de Sienne, jaune de Naples, brun Van Dyck, rouge anglais.

Colors on screen

A screen does not print: it emits light. Every color is therefore a conversion of the printed CMYK, and it varies from screen to screen, just as it varies from paper to paper. The CMYK values are the book’s; the RGB, HEX and L*a*b* (D65) values are computed. Nearby shades and the viewfinder measure differences with the CIEDE2000 formula.

The CMYK display (switch at the top of the page) simulates ink on paper: whites take the paper’s tone and blacks the ink’s, like a soft proof in layout software. It is an indication, not a certified proof.

Warm and cool colors are sorted by undertone, as in personal color analysis, measuring their hue in OKLCH. Warm colors lean to yellow and orange: coral, rust, ochre, mustard, yellow olive. Cool colors lean to blue: raspberry, fuchsia, plum, and every green, blue and violet. Neutrals are whites, greys and blacks, plus the quiet colors fashion and interiors treat as neutrals: beige, ecru, cream, sand, camel, taupe, greige, khaki, sage and muted browns. A combination is warm or cool when all its colors are (neutrals go with both), contrasting when it mixes both.

The viewfinder and your photos

The viewfinder runs entirely in your browser: the photo, or the camera image, is never uploaded or stored. Calibrating on a white sheet applies a Bradford chromatic adaptation: the sheet is the white reference, and the cast of the light is removed from the reading.

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Rights

Sanzo Wada died in 1967: his work entered the public domain in Japan on 1 January 2018, and the National Diet Library publishes it as such. In France, a work from a country outside the European Union is protected for the term of its country of origin (article L123-12 of the Intellectual Property Code).

Assorti reproduces neither the layout, nor the texts, nor the images of the Seigensha reissue, and does not borrow its title.

Credits and hosting

“dictionary-of-colour-combinations” dataset, © 2020 Matt DesLauriers, after Dain M. Blodorn Kim, MIT license. Archivo typeface by Omnibus-Type, SIL Open Font License. Jean jacket photo (viewfinder demonstration): “Jean jacket” by NikosLikomitros, Wikimedia Commons, CC0. Hosted by Cloudflare, Inc., 101 Townsend St, San Francisco, CA 94107, United States.