It's late at night and you're searching for something to watch on TV, switching between streaming services until you settle on a new movie or series you've heard about. But you may find that the entertainment you've chosen looks rather bland. "If you walk outside on a warm day, you'll find infinitely more color than you would in a contemporary blockbuster," film critic and journalist Barry Levitt has noted. Laura Hillard, lecturer in cinematography at the University of Salford in Salford, England, told The Guardian recently that the prevalence of flat monotone images in film and TV today "is due in part to changes in camera technology and a lack of careful color grading work."

Anyone who follows this page knows that I love books. All kinds of books. Home-made flip books. Scrappy zines done on copiers running out of toner. Art books. Design books. Photo books. One-off artists books. Stands to reason, being that DART exists solely because of two very special books, American Illustration and American Photography, which have been celebrating the best in design arts for publication for going on half a century. This new DART Book Prize contest is my way of th...