God help the World. The Info Pages

Serving specialists in the art, science, and industry of coloring materials. We are concerned with dyes and pigments; using instruments and software to color inks, plastics, textiles, ceramics, and coatings; conservation and restoration, printing and reproduction, design, and education.

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About me, my career, and color engineering

I colored plastics for 30 years. Before that, I was an analytical chemist who worked in chemistry laboratories of a hospital, the US Food and Drug, and chemical plants for ten years. Then I became a color technologist in industry, because I knew spectrophotometry and could use computers, starting with analog computers!

I was fortunate enough to join the field when the science was young and digital computers were new, and the theoretical work was finally being reduced to practice. Happily, at national meetings of the Inter-Society Color Council, I got to meet the creative people who made it a science, as well as workers in color from an amazing variety of technical fields, all bonded together because of color.

The technology is useful everywhere you see color that nature didn't provide automatically. There is one best way to get a required color effect, at a sensible cost, that minimizes damage to the end product, to people, and the environment.  The color engineer seeks to find that ideal.

Behind the job of color engineering in each industry are a few thousand people who are largely self-taught in multiple disciplines: physiology, psychology, spectroscopy, materials science, chemistry, physics, mechanics, engineering, styling, purchasing, sales and marketing, on and on. In most any industry, the color experts will have important dealings with just about every department in the organization, as well as the vendors, customers, end users, and regulatory agencies. 

Making color the right way is fascinating work. It is important, but usually not in a life-death way. It's an interesting career, and it's complex enough to pay well for a smart people-person.

I'm finished coloring things beyond painting stuff around my apartment. Now I serve as a New Orleans tour guide. I do folk dancing three or four times a week. I keep a tank of angelfish at my sister's convent, and maintain the Angelfish Breeding FAQ for beginners to that hobby. At every opportunity, I create a Web site to mark the milestone and share the wealth. I also do Web sites for others who like my work, sometimes for a profit.

The Coloring Pages are a way that I contributed to a field that I loved and put bread on the table for many years. Now it could provide a place for YOU to contribute. Unlike books, the Web does not have to be static. It is a way we can give that can keep on giving. Over 220,000 visitors have seen these pages in their first twelve years. That pleases me!

Bill (aka Reggie) Dawes
Former Color Engineer
... now a webmaster and tour guide