Sanzo Colors

UPDATE: see below in thread. I added new numbering and output options.

Last weekend I picked up a charming little book called "A Dictionary of Color Combinations" published in Japan in 1932 by a pioneering color expert of his day, Sanzo Wada. I was so delighted by this book that I turned it into a node.

The book consists of 348 carefully chosen color combinations: 120 duos, another 120 trios, and 108 quartets, all formed from a stable of 159 colors, each with an evocative name. It's very simple, but there is something magical about it.

You can find our more about it here: https://sanzo-wada.dmbk.io

And here: https://jinenstore.com/products/seigensha-a-dictionary-of-color-combinations

The first of these links includes a GitHub with all the color data listed in a JSON file. Unfortunately, after much work, I discovered many errors and omissions in that data. Searching further, I found a cleaner data source here: https://www.wada-sanzo-colors.com/about

The data is open source under the following license: https://github.com/mattdesl/dictionary-of-colour-combinations/blob/master/LICENSE.md

It took some doing, but I was able to turn all of this into a simple, freestanding Nodebox node. Demo and screenshot attached.

To summon a particular color combination from the book, all you have to do is enter its number. There are four ways of doing this:

• Classic Numbers. A number from 1 to 348 from the book.
• Duos. A number from 1 to 120 to select a two colors.
• Trios. A number from 1 to 120 to select three colors.
• Quartets. A number from 1 to 108 to select four colors.

The first method is handy if you want to step through all 348 combos, or have the book and want to call up a combo from that. The other three methods are useful if you know how many colors you need (2, 3 or 4) and want to restrict your list to those. You can enter combo numbers one a time or hook up a range node to create a chart.

You then have two choices of output:

• Swatch. Output a swatch of the colors with the color names below each color.
• Colors. Output a list of 2, 3, or 4 colors, which you can then feed into other nodes.

That's it! I hope you find this node as delightful as I do. I will be adding it to the color section of my library soon.

just like to say thank you for that beautiful color palette
that will definitely be useful

Glad you see the value. If you do end up using this node in some future project, I'd love to see it!

If you really like these color combos, you might consider getting a copy of the paperback book. I find it delightful to thumb through it, find a combination I especially like, and then instantly see it in my NodeBox project by using this node.

You can get one from Amazon here: https://a.co/d/7xiJVni

thanks for the link
will have a look at it

UPDATE

I added a new output option: Names.

Choosing this option outputs the color names of whichever swatch you've currently selected. This can be useful for labeling.

The attached demo shows how you can use this new option to build a complete list of all colors referenced in the swatches, with each label filled with the color it describes.

Enjoy!

Thats a nice addition, thank you

ANOTHER UPDATE

I originally conceived of this node as a way of finding color combinations. But Sanzo Wada's book has another section where he simply lists the 159 colors sorted roughly by hue. I realized that getting at that sorted list of colors is also quite useful.

So I added a new Numbering option and a new output option. I also changed the second parameter from "Combo number" to just "Number" since that number can now represent either a combo number or a color number.

There are now five numbering options:

• Combo Number. Formerly "Classic Number". 1 to 348 from the book.
• Color Number. 1 to 159 from the back of the book
• Duos. 1 to 120, as before
• Trios. 1 to 120, as before
• Quartets 1 to 108, as before

I also changed the Output options:

• Swatch. As before.
• Color. As before
• Table. Formerly "Names"

The new Table option produces a table with the following columns:

• number. The color number
• color. The color name
• hex. The hex code of the number
• swatch. A square filled with the color

The rows of the table are defined by your numbering option and the number selected.

So, if you choose "Trios" as your numbering option, and 7 as your number, you could get a swatch of the seventh trio, the three colors in that trio, or a table giving the numbers, names, hex values, and swatches for those three colors. If you just want the names you can get that using a lookup node.

If you just want a particular color, set your Numbering option to "Color Number" and choose the number. You can then see a swatch of that color, get the color itself, or get a one-row table to lookup its number or name.

If you choose table output, you can use my draw_table node to produce a nice table including the swatches. You can feed a range node (1 to 160) to generate a table of all the colors.

The attached demo shows two ways of displaying the full color list. On the left I show the table with swatches using draw_table. On the right I show a gallery of swatches using Swatch outputs.

Thanks to lastvector for testing my updates and for his kind words.

I think I now have provided all the information from the book, so I hope this will be my final update.

wow, i am impressed