Colorizing a Visualization

Using Harmony and the Albers App to achieve color harmony in your data visualizations

The flow chart above diagrams the process of colorizing a visualization using blank templates from the Interaction of Color app, an invaluable tool both for learning about color and for designing visualizations. Before I get into that, though, I need to explain Color Harmony, a methodology for choosing colors that work together in creating an image. As examples, I’ll demonstrate how I’ve used Interaction of Color to build color schemes for a treemap visualization and a bubble chart. After that, you’ll see how one of our examples fails to address color deficiency and how to address this issue by using text in addition to a color scheme.

Interaction of Color is available for the iPad in the App Store. There is a free trial version and a complete version for purchase that costs $13.99. Another tool used in this exploration of color is Adobe Capture, which I use for verifying Color Harmonies. This is a free app available online from Apple’s App Store and Google’s Google Play site. The app works on Android, iPhone and iPad devices. Information visualization examples are created with Tableau Public and Coblis — Color Blindness Simulator is used to evaluate our visualization examples for color deficiency considerations.