ISCC-NBS system
Encyclopedia
The ISCC–NBS System of Color Designation is a system for naming color
s based on a set of 12 basic color terms and a small set of adjective modifiers. It was first established in the 1930s by a joint effort of the Inter-Society Color Council, made up of delegates from various American trade organizations, and the National Bureau of Standards, a US government agency. As suggested in 1932 by the first chairman of the ISCC, the system’s goal is to be “a means of designating colors in the United States Pharmacopoeia, in the National Formulary, and in general literature ... such designation to be sufficiently standardized as to be acceptable and usable by science, sufficiently broad to be appreciated and used by science, art, and industry, and sufficiently commonplace to be understood, at least in a general way, by the whole public.” The system aims to provide a basis on which color definitions in fields from fashion and printing to botany and geology can be systematized and regularized, so that each industry need not invent its own incompatible color system.
In 1939, the system’s approach was published in the Journal of Research of the National Bureau of Standards, and the ISCC formally approved the system, which consisted of a set of blocks within the color space
defined by the Munsell color system
as embodied by the Munsell Book of Color. Over the following decades the ISCC–NBS system’s boundaries were tweaked and its relation to various other color standards were defined, including for instance those for plastics, building materials, botany, paint, and soil. After the definition of the Munsell system was slightly altered by its 1943 renotations, the ISCC–NBS system was redefined in the 1950s in relation to the new Munsell coordinates. In 1955, the NBS published The Color Names Dictionary, which cross-referenced terms from several other color systems and dictionaries, relating them to the ISCC–NBS system and thereby to each other. In 1965, the NBS published Centroid Color Charts made up of color samples demonstrating the central color in each category, as a physical representation of the system usable by the public, and also published The Universal Color Language, a more general system for color designation with various degrees of precision from completely generic (13 broad categories) to extremely precise (numeric values from spectrophotometric measurement). In 1976, The Color Names Dictionary and The Universal Color Language were combined and updated with the publication of Color: Universal Language and Dictionary of Names, the definitive source on the ISCC–NBS system.
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
, and
.
Between these lie a further 16 intermediate categories:
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
.
These categories can be further subdivided into 267 named categories by combining a hue name with modifiers (the example centroids shown here are for the hue name “purple”):
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
.
(Not all modifiers apply to every hue name. For example, there is no brilliant brown or very deep pink.)
Each of the 267 ISCC–NBS categories is defined by one or more “blocks” within the color solid of the Munsell color system
, where each block includes colors falling in a specific interval
in hue
, value
, and chroma, resulting in a shape which “might be called a sector of a right cylindrical annulus (like a piece of pie with the point bitten off)”. The blocks fill the color solid, and are non-overlapping, so that every point falls into exactly one block.
Color
Color or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors...
s based on a set of 12 basic color terms and a small set of adjective modifiers. It was first established in the 1930s by a joint effort of the Inter-Society Color Council, made up of delegates from various American trade organizations, and the National Bureau of Standards, a US government agency. As suggested in 1932 by the first chairman of the ISCC, the system’s goal is to be “a means of designating colors in the United States Pharmacopoeia, in the National Formulary, and in general literature ... such designation to be sufficiently standardized as to be acceptable and usable by science, sufficiently broad to be appreciated and used by science, art, and industry, and sufficiently commonplace to be understood, at least in a general way, by the whole public.” The system aims to provide a basis on which color definitions in fields from fashion and printing to botany and geology can be systematized and regularized, so that each industry need not invent its own incompatible color system.
In 1939, the system’s approach was published in the Journal of Research of the National Bureau of Standards, and the ISCC formally approved the system, which consisted of a set of blocks within the color space
Color space
A color model is an abstract mathematical model describing the way colors can be represented as tuples of numbers, typically as three or four values or color components...
defined by the Munsell color system
Munsell color system
In colorimetry, the Munsell color system is a color space that specifies colors based on three color dimensions: hue, value , and chroma . It was created by Professor Albert H...
as embodied by the Munsell Book of Color. Over the following decades the ISCC–NBS system’s boundaries were tweaked and its relation to various other color standards were defined, including for instance those for plastics, building materials, botany, paint, and soil. After the definition of the Munsell system was slightly altered by its 1943 renotations, the ISCC–NBS system was redefined in the 1950s in relation to the new Munsell coordinates. In 1955, the NBS published The Color Names Dictionary, which cross-referenced terms from several other color systems and dictionaries, relating them to the ISCC–NBS system and thereby to each other. In 1965, the NBS published Centroid Color Charts made up of color samples demonstrating the central color in each category, as a physical representation of the system usable by the public, and also published The Universal Color Language, a more general system for color designation with various degrees of precision from completely generic (13 broad categories) to extremely precise (numeric values from spectrophotometric measurement). In 1976, The Color Names Dictionary and The Universal Color Language were combined and updated with the publication of Color: Universal Language and Dictionary of Names, the definitive source on the ISCC–NBS system.
Color categories
The backbone of the ISCC–NBS system is a set of 13 basic color categories, made up of 10 hue names and three neutral categories:,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
, and
.
Between these lie a further 16 intermediate categories:
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
.
These categories can be further subdivided into 267 named categories by combining a hue name with modifiers (the example centroids shown here are for the hue name “purple”):
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
.
(Not all modifiers apply to every hue name. For example, there is no brilliant brown or very deep pink.)
Each of the 267 ISCC–NBS categories is defined by one or more “blocks” within the color solid of the Munsell color system
Munsell color system
In colorimetry, the Munsell color system is a color space that specifies colors based on three color dimensions: hue, value , and chroma . It was created by Professor Albert H...
, where each block includes colors falling in a specific interval
Interval
Interval may refer to:* Interval , a range of numbers * Interval measurements or interval variables in statistics is a level of measurement...
in hue
Hue
Hue is one of the main properties of a color, defined technically , as "the degree to which a stimulus can be describedas similar to or different from stimuli that are described as red, green, blue, and yellow,"...
, value
Lightness (color)
Lightness is a property of a color, or a dimension of a color space, that is defined in a way to reflect the subjective brightness perception of a color for humans along a lightness–darkness axis. A color's lightness also corresponds to its amplitude.Various color models have an explicit term for...
, and chroma, resulting in a shape which “might be called a sector of a right cylindrical annulus (like a piece of pie with the point bitten off)”. The blocks fill the color solid, and are non-overlapping, so that every point falls into exactly one block.