Looking through my list of bookmarks, it’s apparent that something I like to read about (other than food) is design. The reason? I believe that well-made, attractive visuals are worth the effort because they can help make a point clearer and more memorable. In a sea of plots and diagrams (or in a room full of posters), you want people to notice, understand, and remember yours. One aspect of this process is finding the right color scheme to get your message across, which can involve several questions: How much (if any) color is necessary? What do I want these colors to convey? Will viewers be able to distinguish every color? When answering these questions, I've found a couple of links to be useful.
Getting inspired/informed:
Getting inspired/informed:
- Dribbble: Although (or perhaps because) this design gallery isn't science-centric, browsing it can trigger new ideas for how to use color and other design elements.
- Color Universal Design: How to make figures that are colorblind-friendly, with examples.
- The subtleties of color: An introduction to using color in data visualization.
Tools:
- Adobe Kuler: Generate color schemes based on color rules or images, browse schemes created by other users, or put together your own. This is nifty for seeing how different colors will look when they are side by side.
- Colorbrewer: A popular tool among scientists in part because it offers different color schemes for different data types.
- Colorzilla: A browser plug-in that makes it easy to pick and analyze color from webpages, for when you see a color that you really want to use.
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