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I think the colors look nice in these visualizations, but I do believe it is possible to drift so far in making visualizations pretty to the detriment of being

I think the colors look nice in these visualizations, but I do believe it is possible to drift so far in making visualizations pretty to the detriment of being clear! First of all, one advantage of highly distinct colors which is discouraged in this article is that.. the colors are more distinct across all sorts of mediums. Sometimes you don't know if your chart will be printed off on a cheap inkjet and showed to the CEO, or blurrily presented on a zoom call over poor WiFi to someone who is colorblind. I think the push to usability should consider these types of scenarios.

deleted 6y ago
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m12k 6y ago
I'd say if you care about consistency across media, try to make your colors have different luminosity, so they can still be distinguished somewhat when someone invariably prints them on a monochrome printer. Also, pure yellow (and to some extent pure green) tends to end up nearly invisible on a lot of color inkjet printers, so tweaking the luminosity is also important there. Overall I think most of the tips this article advocates will also help across various mediums.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  For data display luminosity can skew the impression of which data dominates. That's a reason not to use luminosity changes IMO. However, if you want to convince people you can skew their impression of the data without technically lying ...
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crazygringo 6y ago
> one advantage of highly distinct colors which is discouraged in this article is that.. the colors are more distinct across all sorts of mediums Actually this is precisely the opposite. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that the advice in the article -- to avoid super-saturated colors, super-bright colors, or colors evenly spaced around the color wheel -- is bad, because all these help increase distinctiveness. But the reality is that when translating across mediums, like inkjet or black and white, these have the problem of blowing out, where light colors turn white and dark colors turn black. And with colorblindness, you encounter the problem of radically different colors becoming indistinguishable. Whereas if you stick to less contrast but still maintain meaningful differences in both hue and lightness, it translates well across mediums. Shades don't get blown out, and levels of lightness remain distinguishable. And as for colorblindness, the article specifically recommends using warm colors vs. blue precisely for this reason: "And they are accessible: colorblind people can easily distinguish blue and orange/red from each other." This is why you don't want to use the whole range of distinctive colors, like red, yellow, green, blue, purple all together.
deleted 6y ago
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MattRix 6y ago
The article talks specifically about colorblindness and how you should look at your visualizations in greyscale to ensure the colours are still distinct.
RobertKerans 6y ago
The article is [extremely] explicitly not discouraging distinct colours. If you think the opposite to the article is true, then I'm not sure what you're advocating, because it isn't distinct colours. The article does talk at length about how to adjust for aesthetics, but at no point does it skimp on also ensuring distinctness.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

m12k 6y ago

I'd say if you care about consistency across media, try to make your colors have different luminosity, so they can still be distinguished somewhat when someone invariably prints them on a monochrome printer. Also, pure yellow (and to some extent pure green) tends to end up nearly invisible on a lot of color inkjet printers, so tweaking the luminosity is also important there. Overall I think most of the tips this article advocates will also help across various mediums.

pbhjpbhj 6y ago
For data display luminosity can skew the impression of which data dominates. That's a reason not to use luminosity changes IMO. However, if you want to convince people you can skew their impression of the data without technically lying ...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

crazygringo 6y ago

> one advantage of highly distinct colors which is discouraged in this article is that.. the colors are more distinct across all sorts of mediums Actually this is precisely the opposite. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that the advice in the article -- to avoid super-saturated colors, super-bright colors, or colors evenly spaced around the color wheel -- is bad, because all these help increase distinctiveness. But the reality is that when translating across mediums, like inkjet or black and white, these have the problem of blowing out, where light colors turn white and dark colors turn black. And with colorblindness, you encounter the problem of radically different colors becoming indistinguishable. Whereas if you stick to less contrast but still maintain meaningful differences in both hue and lightness, it translates well across mediums. Shades don't get blown out, and levels of lightness remain distinguishable. And as for colorblindness, the article specifically recommends using warm colors vs. blue precisely for this reason: "And they are accessible: colorblind people can easily distinguish blue and orange/red from each other." This is why you don't want to use the whole range of distinctive colors, like red, yellow, green, blue, purple all together.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

MattRix 6y ago

The article talks specifically about colorblindness and how you should look at your visualizations in greyscale to ensure the colours are still distinct.

RobertKerans 6y ago

The article is [extremely] explicitly not discouraging distinct colours. If you think the opposite to the article is true, then I'm not sure what you're advocating, because it isn't distinct colours. The article does talk at length about how to adjust for aesthetics, but at no point does it skimp on also ensuring distinctness.