Why you should judge a book by its colour

A month ago I stepped into a second hand bookshop and noticed that they arranged books not by genre, title or author but by colour. James Andrews, previously of Foviance, told me that arranging content by colour is not a new idea. Chris Cobb started organising books by colour in his Adobe installation in 2004.

The result is so stunning and beautiful that I had to try it myself at home. I rearranged by books by colour (see image) and was surprised by the patterns that emerged. First of all, I noticed that the majority of books I owned were black or white. The book colours also seem to suggest the nature of the book’s content, e.g. the black titles ones were more male and action orientated (The Godfather by Puzo) whereas the white ones were more poetic (Wind-up Bird Chronicles by Murakami).

You may think that this makes findability impossible and you would be right. It takes about 5 minutes to find a specific book and I have to learn where they are positioned on the shelf. However, I now seem to find more interesting books to read than ever before. Previously, I would have skipped certain areas of the bookshelf because I knew where to find the book I was looking for. Now books that I may have overlooked or ignored keep popping up in the most unusual places and inspire me to read them. It has changed the usability of my bookcase.

I’m off now to get some more yellow books which I think is a great state of mind when looking for new reading material. 

A new look for organising your books