Read a rainbow: arranging books by colour

by jonathan on November 30, 2009

A few years ago I visited the Seattle Public Library and was struck by this display in the children’s library making the most of different coloured spines on the books (photo by Quadelle).

Read a rainbow at Seattle Public Library.

Read a rainbow at Seattle Public Library.

Every now and then I get the urge to run a similar display in my library. I tend to get blank looks or frowns when I mention it. It crossed my mind again the other day and I remembered a link gizo had sent me some time ago. It is a beautiful example of books organised by colour by flickr user chotda.

Flickr user chotda's beautiful arrangement.

Flickr user chotda's beautiful arrangement.

Finding myself more and more excited by the idea, I did a tiny bit of digging and found a reasonably in depth treatment of the topic over at The Design Observer and another discussion at Colour Lovers. Looking a little bit closer there is even a whole flickr group devoted to the subject.

How do you organise your books? Has anyone else in Reading Hacks land taken this approach with their home (or work) library?

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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

1 vetti December 1, 2009 at 9:19 pm

I would love to re-organise my books by colour – but right now, they are shelved by type (eg/ food, travel lit…) as well as height (largest to smallest, left to right).

2 jonathan December 1, 2009 at 10:32 pm

Mine are a bit random at the moment, with some rough sorting by type. The one group that are all together is my signed copies.

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