Books
Don Pavey looking at the Munsell Color Tree
These books are the result of a long exploration into colour symbolism, psychology, and human behaviour and continue to shape my understanding of design and visual communication.
Colour Concepts Palettes & Pigments
Book production | Graphics origination and layout
Colour Concepts explores colour traditions across ancient and modern cultures and Eastern and Western art and design. It examines fascinating examples of contemporary colour aesthetics influenced by the mind’s key functions — Intuition, Thinking, Feeling, and Sensation. The book also includes a comprehensive Dictionary of Palettes and Dictionary of Pigments.
Buddhist Colour
Book production | Graphics origination and layout
Tibetan Buddhists accept colours as expressions of human energies. The same colour can embody either a positive virtue or a negative vice, such as Unreason, Arrogance, Anger, Misunderstanding, and Delusion Colours. These vices can be transformed or sublimated into principal virtues, including Intuition, Fairness, Right Judgement, and Intellect.
Mandalas depict the universe divided into four quadrants — blue, yellow, red, and green — each governed by a meditation Buddha of the corresponding colour. Above these realms presides a white meditation Buddha, guiding the suppliant towards an experience beyond wisdom and spiritual ecstasy, known as Nirvana.
Colour Engrained in the Mind
Book production | Graphics origination and layout
Colour Engrained in the Mind explains the rationale behind user-friendly computer profiling tests designed to analyse people’s best attributes and hidden talents. Projective colours and gestalts have been researched over many years, tracing the history of projective symbolism from the earliest clinical psychiatry to the present day.
The subject is enriched by exploring it within the wider context of the history of art, zeitgeist, and aesthetics. Particular emphasis is placed on the four Jungian psychological functions, leading to the concept of transforming or sublimating vices into virtues through the use of the ProMICAD profiling test.
Colour Symbolism
Book production | Graphics origination and layout
A brief history of systems of colour symbolism from prehistory to modern information technology. Archetypal powers were attributed to colours because of their evocative qualities in everyday life, qualities arising from the physiological aspects of colour perception.
Long-enduring colour systems included the Greco-Roman theories of the colours of the temperaments. These, together with the classical musical modes, were interpreted through colour in art. Before the early Renaissance, learned alchemists personalised the colours of the planets, while Christian dignitaries introduced the liturgical colours. Various countries also adopted heraldic and sumptuary colours.
From Newton’s prismatic colour circle and the paradoxical synaesthetic movements, the most practical and evocative colour symbolisms of today have emerged through contemporary Jungian colour systems. These systems can project specific moods and mental effects, harnessing the power of psychological aesthetics through the work of artists and designers.
Color and Humanism
Book production | Graphics origination and layout
The power of colour has been used by the great masters of the past and present to evoke a wide range of feelings and responses: to shock, to overawe, and to stimulate action; to help people think and make judgements; to delight with subtle pleasures; to calm the mind; or to leave viewers spellbound by subliminal visions.
Historians will discover here a new approach to history, while artists and designers who use colour to influence are invited to explore a pragmatic framework for unlocking unexpected and powerful concepts in aesthetics. These ideas can inspire new ways of employing colour archetypes, giving rise to a myriad of future movements in the visual arts.
Psycho Advertising
Book production | Graphics origination and layout
Why do some advertisements stay with us long after we’ve turned the page — even appearing in our dreams? This book argues that the most powerful advertising does not persuade through logic, but through imagery that speaks directly to the unconscious.
Drawing on Freud’s theory of symbols and Jung’s psychology of the unconscious, the author reveals a central paradox: a symbol only holds power over us while its meaning remains hidden. The moment we consciously understand it, it loses its influence.
Through vivid real-world examples, the book uncovers the hidden techniques advertisers use to tap into our desires, while looking ahead to a future language of visual persuasion.
An insightful and accessible read for anyone working in advertising, marketing, or design, and for those who want to understand why images sell long before we realise we are being sold to.
Don Pavey Biography
Book production | Graphics origination and layout
A biography of a British artist who believed that Colour deserved a greater knowledge base within art and design education. In pursuit of this vision, he collaborated with scientists and psychologists capable of influencing the future of education.
His exploration of the psycho-aesthetics of colour led him to engage with Carl Gustav Jung and Dr Margaret Lowenfeld, creator of the renowned Mosaic Test. He also visited the Creativity Laboratory of Professor Maurice Wilkins, the scientist who first visualised the DNA molecule, and received guidance from the distinguished eye surgeon and artist Patrick Trevor-Roper.
Pavey combined the principles of colour and gestalt psychology to create ProMICAD, a unique computer personality profiling system. Widely used in practice, the programme was designed to uncover and develop innate excellence — and even genius — in individuals whose potential might otherwise remain hidden.
The Art of profiling aptitudes
Book production | Graphics origination and layout
A book describing a scholar’s research into discovering potential talents, excellence, and even genius in ordinary people. This was achieved by the author after many years of dedicated research, culminating in a highly successful formula developed in 2000.
The approach was recognised by the DfEE (Department for Education and Employment) as a test of personal effectiveness, and was further refined and developed during the 2012 London Olympics.
The work offers a fascinating exploration of human potential, demonstrating how hidden abilities can be identified, nurtured, and transformed into exceptional achievement.