The Munsell Colour System In The Professional Culture Of Environmental Colour Specialists

Abstract

The paper’s aim is to examine how the Munsell Colour System has been used around the world to support the development of environmental colour research, to teach colour, and to communicate colour specifications in environmental colour design. The study explores the data collected from two different sources. First, an online survey of colour professionals was carried out from November 2017 through March 2018 in order to gauge their experience with the Munsell Colour System, the total sample size being 202 respondents (86 males and 116 females) from thirty-five different countries located in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Second, the study used quantitative content analysis to investigate the meanings, themes and patterns of how the Munsell Colour System is applied in environmental colour design. To understand the main ways the Munsell Colour System is used both in theory and practice, we reviewed the AIC (Association Internationale de la Couleur) Congress and Meeting Proceedings over a ten-year period from 2008 to 2017. From a total of 2,122 papers published in the Proceedings books, we selected 314 that reported the use of the Munsell Colour System and examined them from the perspective of cross-cultural differences and variations with time.