Where the colour wheel came from, how Munsell put colour in order, the 1920s experiment behind every screen colour and the blog post that changed it on the web.
HistoryBuilding a palette
The colour wheel wasn't invented once. Newton published a wheel of light in 1704, painters started a red, yellow and blue wheel in 1708, and the two still disagree. That's why your design tools can give different complementary colours.
12 min read
History
Oklab, the colour maths behind OKLCH, began as a free blog post by Swedish engineer Björn Ottosson on 23 December 2020. Nine days later it reached the W3C. Within ten months CSS voted it in and Photoshop made it the default. Here's who carried it, and what the 'OK' honestly promises.
11 min read
HistoryHow we see colour
Every hex code is a point on a map drawn from the colour matches of 17 people in two London-area labs in the late 1920s. Here's who they were, why the numbers needed 'minus red', how the CIE fixed it in 1931, and why some new screens are starting to drift from it.
14 min read
History
Albert Munsell was a Boston painter who didn't trust colour names. He spent two decades turning what his eye saw into numbers, admitted which parts weren't his, and left a lopsided colour tree that others re-measured and soil scientists still use.
12 min read