Bubbles on a Diad

Creating a Bubble Chart Visualization with a Diad Color Harmony

Combining two colors that are two steps apart on the Color Wheel creates a Diad Color Harmony. This Color Harmony is one of the lesser used ones. I decided to cover it here to add variety to your options for colorizing visualizations.

As noted in my earlier Nightingale writings, color harmony is the process of choosing colors on a Color Wheel that work well together in the composition of an image. “The Blues of Color Harmony” noted the similarities between color harmony and musical harmony. Here, I will delve further into color theory by discussing the Diad Color Harmony and show how Color Gradients can be created.

The Adobe Color web app will be used to create a Diad color theme that will then be applied to a bubble chart example. The bubbles effect for each variable will be produced with Color Gradients. A flat, or circle, bubble chart alternative will also be shown. To address individuals with limited color vision, the data visualization examples are checked with the Color Blindness Simulator — Coblis. Both Adobe Color and Coblis are freely available online tools for your continued use.

Reviewing Color Harmony Concepts

Isaac Newton is credited with creating the Color Wheel concept when he closed the…