Goethe's Triangle - a colour game

This is a pack of cards using colour theory for game play. It involves Goethe's Triangle, a way of demonstrating colour mixing, familiar to all art students.

Goethe's Triangle - 3 primary colours, three secondaries, three tertiaries

As we all know, the primaries are red, yellow, blue, and the secondaries (mixing the primaries in equal parts) are violet, green and orange. The triangle shows what happens when you mix the secondaries in equal parts, getting russet (orange and violet), citrine (orange and green) and olive (violet and green). Here are the three kinds of colour, removed from the triangle but in the same orientation:

We thought this would make an excellent game space: people collecting the colour cards according to colour principles.

You can collect the secondaries and their components:

or the Tertiaries and theirs:

Other relations that are possible to collect are the complementary relations:

Later colour theoreticians in Germany gave special metaphysical associations to edge and apex sets, and they are significant in the Rummy-family Goethe's Triangle game These are the Edges, sets of five colours (Lucid, Serious, Reflective):

These are the Apices, sets of four colours (Serene, Mighty, and Melancholic):

The pack itself is six sets of square cards representing the colours.

This means that there is an evenly distributed set of cards, and the interest arises from the combinations. You can buy a set of Goethe's Triangle cards printed on demand at Make Playing Cards here.

The Complete Collection

We have invented 6 games, three social games and three solitaire games to play with the cards, but of course, players can make their own. Please let us know if you think of a new one. Rules can be downloaded as a combined PDF file.

combined_gt__rules.pdf

Download PDF • 105KB

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Multiplayer Games

Goethe's Triangle Rummy A strategic collection game where players gather colour sets to score points. Build sets of primary colours (yellow, red, blue), secondary colours (orange, violet, green), tertiaries (citrine, russet, olive), or mixing combinations (orange needs yellow and red). The pattern bonuses reward understanding how different colour relationships interconnect across the triangle.

Goethe's Triangle Hanafuda A competitive fishing game where players capture colour sets from a shared field. With all captured sets visible to everyone, strategic planning becomes crucial. Score points by collecting multiple sets of the same type - the visible information creates constant tactical awareness as players compete for limited colour combinations.

Goethe's Triangle Shedding A fast-paced card shedding game based on colour adjacency rules. Play cards that blend naturally with the current colour, following the triangle's mixing relationships. Shed complement pairs for powerful two-card plays. The game teaches blending relationships through necessity - you literally cannot play without understanding which colours connect.

Solitaire Games

Goethe's Triangle Tableau A methodical solitaire with two variants: Strategic (all cards visible) for pure logic puzzles, or Classic (top cards only) for traditional solitaire uncertainty. Build complete colour sets from nine stacks of six cards each. The triangle structure creates genuine risk of failure while teaching colour relationships through repeated pattern recognition.

Goethe's Triangle Pyramid A spatial puzzle where players remove colour sets from a pyramid formation. As sets are cleared, new cards become exposed higher up the pyramid. The gradual revelation creates mounting tension as you work toward the single card at the peak, while the multiple set types offer rich strategic choices about which colours to prioritize.

Goethe's Triangle Accordion A compression solitaire where cards move left according to adjacency and complement rules. Transform a long row into a single pile by understanding which colours can blend (1 position) or complement (3 positions). The one-handed mechanics make it perfect for quick colour theory practice, while the compression creates satisfying moments of strategic breakthrough.

Each game stands alone as an engaging experience, yet together they form a complete educational ecosystem. The colour theory teaches itself through play, revealing the elegant mathematics of visual harmony that artists have used for centuries.

The Goethe Triangle

Goethe's theory of colour is a profound non-Newtonian account of the world. There are a number of reputable sources to consult if you want to know more, but you might well start with the 1998 film Light, Darkness, and Colour. It can be watched on YouTube here.

Here is a snap from the film showing the magenta that we synthesise out of grey.

While grounded in Goethe's conceptions of colour, the colour synthesis triangle isn't actually from his pen. He did of course sketch out the colour circle we know so well:

But the triangle itself was actually created by Guido Schreiber in 1868, before being misattributed to Goethe by artist Carry van Biema in her 1931 work "Farben und Formen als lebendige Kräfte" (Colours and Forms as Living Forces). Schreiber, a trade school teacher from Baden (1799-1871), simplified earlier colour triangles by placing just one mixture between each primary colour. His system combined Tobias Mayer's mixture approach with George Field's concept of primary, secondary, and tertiary colours. Van Biema later added emotional qualities to different regions of the triangle, creating the rich system that provides the foundation for our game.

By using modern colour theory and Josef Albers' principles of colour interaction, we've selected nine distinct colours for our deck, each representing a specific position in the triangle system.