If one says "Red" (the name of a color) and there are 50 people listening, it can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds.

And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.

Even when a certain color is specified which all listeners have seen innumerable times—such as the red of the Coca-Cola signs which is the same red all over the country—they will still think of many different reds.

Even if all the listeners have hundreds of reds in front of them from which to choose the Coca-Cola red, they will again select quite different colors. And no one can be sure that he has found the precise red shade.

And even if that round red Coca-Cola sign with the white name in the middle is actually shown so that everyone focuses on the same red, each will receive the same projection on his retina,

but no one can be sure whether each has the same perception.

When we consider further the associations and reactions which are experienced in connection with the color and the name, probably everyone will diverge again in many different directions.

What does this show?

First, it is hard, if not impossible, to remember distinct colors.

This underscores the important fact that the visual memory is very poor in comparison with our auditory memory. Often the latter is able to repeat a melody heard only once or twice.

Second, the nomenclature of color is most inadequate.

Though there are innumerable colors—shades and tones—in daily vocabulary, there are only about 30 color names.

And even if that round red Coca-Cola sign with the white name in the middle is actually shown so that everyone focuses on the same red, each will receive the same projection on his retina, but no one can be sure whether each has the same perception.

The concept that "the simpler the form of a letter the simpler its reading" was an obsession of beginning constructivism. It became something like a dogma, and is still followed by "modernistic" typographers.

This notion has proved to be wrong, because in reading we do not read letters but words, words as a whole, as a "word picture." This was discovered in psychology, particularly in Gestalt psychology.

Ophthalmology has disclosed that the more the letters are differentiated from each other, the easier is the reading.

the more the letters are differentiated from each other, the easier is the reading.

Without going into comparisons and details, it should be realized that words consisting of only capital letters present the most difficult reading-because of their equal height, equal volume, and, with most, their equal width.

When comparing serif letters with sans-serif, the latter provide an uneasy reading.

The fashionable preference for sans-serif in text shows neither historical nor practical competence.

First, sans-serifs were designed as letters not for texts but for captions, when pictorial reproductions were introduced with stone lithography.

Second, they produce poor "word pictures."

Equally, a factual identification of colors within a given painting has nothing to do with a sensitive seeing nor with an understanding of the color action within the painting.

Our study of color differs fundamentally from a study which anatomically dissects colorants (pigments) and physical qualities (wave length).

Our concern is the interaction of color; that is, seeing what happens between colors.

We are able to hear a single tone.

But we almost never (that is, without special devices) see a single color unconnected and unrelated to other colors.

Colors present themselves in continuous flux, constantly related to changing neighbors and changing conditions.

As a consequence, this proves for the reading of color what Kandinsky often demanded for the reading of art: what counts is not the what but the how.