I produce graphical reporting occasionally at my job (manufacturing plant). Around here a lot of People still like to print physical copies of the morning repo

I produce graphical reporting occasionally at my job (manufacturing plant). Around here a lot of People still like to print physical copies of the morning reports. One thing I've found is that although colors may be distinguishable from each other when viewed on a screen on a print out similar colors all blur together for this reason I like to make sure there is a high contrast between neighboring regions (especially on things like stacked bar charts). Other big issue is Overhead projectors. It's pretty common for people to review graphs in morning meetings and similar. A lot of projectors are low resolution and also get used in places like control rooms with poor ambient lighting so you can have similar problem with distinguishing color hues. Using patterns (cross hatching etc) as well as colors also helps distinguish regions from each other. If you look at industrial control software how dials gauges and the like are represented you can get some good tips on best practices and how to make high contrast easily distinguishable graphics. These things are designed for maximum readability.