Arrange your books by color... maybe | How About Orange

September 17, 2007

Arrange your books by color... maybe

This photo from Superhero is taken in a San Francisco bookstore where an artist named Chris Cobb rearranged all 20,000 books by color. Not sure if this helped the owner sell more books, but it looks pretty cool. Read more here. The photo is part of flickr's Rainbow of Books pool. Take a look to decide if you want to do this in your own house. I don't think I could stand not being able to find my books, but my friend did it a year or so ago, and it looks nice at her place.

23 comments:

leethal said...

hah i just did that with my dvds and it looks pretty cool... i couldn't imagine how much time it would take to do a whole bookstore!!

kristy said...

ahh yes i did that a little while ago too - after seeing it in a design magazine, with a whole walls worth of books. my teeny bookshelf looks a little lame though and i'm not sure if you can actually tell they're in colour order - but i guess i know!

Erin said...

I did that after my recent move (since I had to unpack anyway... it's all a clean slate). I have one of those big square Ikea units, 5 units high by 5 units wide. So I organized by column. The far right column is recipe books, next two are theology books, next column is design books and the final column are those that didn't fit in the previous topics. And then they are arranged by colour top to botton across the rows.

It means I can still find everything I need, but it's not nearly so messy to look at.

Beth Howard said...

But don't you think you would remember what color your covers are? I always look for my books based on how I remember they look. This is so beautiful!

Anonymous said...

I'm a reader & I love great design ideas, but those two don't work together very well in this color arrangement. I need to find my books. I would do it for someone else, but not for me.

NCC Happenings said...

I love it!

It looks good, but I also think it is about how you mind relates to things. I read in last month's Blueprint about someone who arranges her books by color because it was the easiest way for her to grab them.

Special K said...

I used to live across from that bookstore when I lived in SF - it's *tiny* I always thought that was one of the coolest projects ever - especially for a commercial space. I'd like to do it to my own books, but I'm a stickler for alphabetizing...

Amy M. said...

That looks really cool but as a library worker, it kind of freaks me out!!!

-Amy

http://craftingbycandlelight.blogspot.com

Florence Knapp (Flossie Teacakes) said...

I love the way it looks and so I did it to our bookshelves about 6 or 7 years ago, but when my husband got home he thought it was an awful idea (he saw it as a sign of my obsessive neatness, rather than any sort of creativity!), so after some heated discussion (he won), we set about de-colour-coding them...but no matter how hard we tried to shuffle them all up, occassionally someone would walk into the living room and stop, slightly aghast, and say: have those books been colour coded?

Anonymous said...

I agree with Beth, I remember all my books by how their covers look, not their title, so this would probably be the easiest way for me to find my books. I guess different people use their memory in different ways, and I am definitely a visual person, and can never remember titles of books or films, just how they looked.

I won't do it though, because I think it would look silly, overdone.

elizabeth said...

i've had that above pic on my bulletin board here at work forever. as soon as i get the most perfect bookshelf from ikea, my books are def. going up in this fashion :)

Stephanie Hatzenbuehler said...

I've always envied people whose brains work like that. I appreciate the concept, but it doesn't make sense to me. The method to my madness is much more chaotic.

Anonymous said...

This works great for those people whose vision of the world includes a rainbow and a pot of gold.

all over the map said...

Can I say again how fun and creative your blog is?
I think this would be a great idea for books used more for decorating purposes, although in time you would know what books were where if you really knew your collection well.
It looks quite amazing.
Thanks for sharing.

Kathleen said...

I totally did this just a few weeks ago! It has made for a few interesting, er, treasure hunts, we'll call them. We were trying to find a particular book, and my visual mind remembered it used to be next to a blue book... which doesn't help at all. I ended up looking through both of my Billy bookshelves until I found it. Looks cool though. I sorted by color and then by height, taller toward the middle, shorter on the outside.

Prêt à Voyager said...

I did it for kicks one day and I love it. Graphic design and art books are so colorful.

Chase Clark said...

I've been wanting to do this but I just got mine nicely arranged by size (my craft books at least) and I rather like it. I'm still considering this for all the others though!

Denise Kiggan said...

Just found your blog through Skinny LaMinx. I did an orange theme on my blog last week. It just sort of happened that way. If I'd known about your blog title, I would love to have mentioned it!
The book idea looks great, but I agree that I would feel insecure trying to find the book I am looking for and needing to remember the colour of the spine first!

Jessica Jones said...

I can't remember my book colors at all! Just the titles. Isn't that weird, for a designer?

delamare said...

I did this a couple of years ago. It stil looks good, I've never had a problem finding a particular book, and only about one in 10 visitors ever comments!

Unknown said...

WOW! Would this help me overcome my mania for wanting my books grouped by author but also by height? Would it elimante the conflict in my mind when publishers change size mid-way through a series?

It appeals to my sense of rainbow, and people already think my wall of books is OTT, so ....

BTW great blog!

Moxie said...

I resisted this for a long time, because my books are arranged by subject, then author. I realized, though, this is absolutely perfect for my collection of children's picture books, which looks unwieldy otherwise. I also did it to my shelf of cookbooks & those are easier to find now.

Anonymous said...

I have always arranged my books by colour group, my husband, family and friends thought it was a little obssesive. Not obsessive just creatively intune! The initial impact of a book shelf is the colours not the titles. It seemed logical :-)