21 Comments

  • Karen says:

    I wish I was a little more daring when it comes to color.
    I recently tried the color difference for emphasis for categorical data, and I’ve tried highlighting the outside of the bars a different color for emphasis.
    Thanks so much for all the tips!
    Karen

  • Oz du Soleil says:

    Really good post. What I really like is the simplicity. This is easy to implement and the result is huge.

    • Ann K. Emery says:

      Thanks Oz! There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of more comprehensive resources about color theory as it applies to data visualization. I tried to select a few of the easiest-to-implement tips that get us the biggest bang for our buck. Let me know if you apply any of the strategies and how they work out.

  • […] Nominal, Sequential, or Diverging? Simple Strategies for Improving Any Chart’s Colors […]

  • Megan says:

    Awesome post, Ann! This is very relevant to our work right now. We are publishing a series of briefs (starting in Word or Excel and then finalizing in InDesign). Do you know of any good tutorials on how to create a custom color template – and save it – in Microsoft products or InDesign?

  • Fernando says:

    Went right over to graphic design and got our company’s color palette. Any ideas for how to incorporate in “line graphs”?

    • Ann K. Emery says:

      Fernando,
      Great! I’d love to see some of your makeover charts — maybe you could tweet me an image when you’re done?
      For examples of using color effectively in line charts, check out Cole Nussbaumer’s blog: http://www.storytellingwithdata.com/ She often uses 1 or 2 colors (gray and blue) and adds just the right amount of contextual details (and in the right places, physically, on each graph) to give the reader the perfect amount of information about each pattern.
      Ann

  • Excellent post Ann! I’m thrilled to have just discovered my DigitalColor Meter on my Macbook Pro and have been having a wonderful time matching fonts and slide backgrounds to pictures I’ve chosen. You just mouse over anywhere and it give you RGB codes for each pixel! Who knew? Why ever didn’t I realize it was there before???

    • Ann K. Emery says:

      Sheila, What a useful built-in feature! My PC’s Microsoft Office 2013 products (like Excel, Word, & PowerPoint) also have a built-in color matching tool. These small features sure can save a lot of clicks (and therefore time and sanity!) I only have Office 2013 on one of the three computers I use, so in the meantime the Instant Eyedropper download continues to be my primary go-to color matching resource.

  • Angie says:

    Hey Ann! I often default to Stephen Few’s color palettes from his book Show Me the Numbers. Another tool similar to Eye Dropper is Color Cop – so handy!
    Love your example of divergent colors – good reminder to use color to my advantage when I’m working with this type of data!

  • […] week I shared strategies for improving any chart’s colors. One of the examples was a diverging stacked bar […]

  • Mynda says:

    Hi Ann,
    I’ve been using company logo colors (and the eyedropper tools) for years as inspiration for my dashboard reports. I like how you’ve taken it a step further and found similar colors using design-seed.com.
    Cheers,
    Mynda.

  • […] bold tone them down to pastel shades. Ann Emery has some great tips on the use of colour in her ‘Simple Strategies for Improving Any Chart’s Colors’ […]

  • […] week I shared strategies for improving any chart’s colors. One of the examples was a diverging stacked bar […]

  • […] For additional color resources, check out Nominal, Sequential, or Diverging: Simple Strategies for Improving Any Chart’s Colors. […]

  • Vienna says:

    This is exactly what I need! I often see graphs in our reports that have some very strange/distracting/meaningless colour palettes, but just have no idea how I should fix it. Thank you 🙂

  • […] Whether your viewers will really understand that diverging stacked bar chart, or whether you should just stick to a regular old stacked bar […]

  • […] very knowledgeable to not at all knowledgeable scale is ordinal so I selected one hue (blue, or green, or orange) and used darker and lighter versions of each hue to correspond to the […]

  • […] you’ll need to determine whether you want to add a categorical, sequential, or diverging palette. I’ll show you categorical. You can add the others as needed using the same […]

  • […] Agree/disagree survey scales are diverging variables so we need a diverging color palette. I selected two hues (blue and red). The most saturated version of each color goes on the outer poles. The only problem with this traditional approach is that the graph is a bit crowded. Where are the viewers supposed to look? What’s most important? When everything all at once is competing for attention, it’s easy to lose viewers. […]

  • Leave a Reply

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    Which Colors Should I Use in My Charts?

    Updated on: Aug 7th, 2013
    Data Visualization
    , , , ,
    Logo with coordinating color palette and RGB colors.

    Colors can make or break a chart.

    Colors direct our eye movements, and therefore our brains and attention.

    It’s up to you: will you help or hinder your reader’s understanding?

    Here are some simple strategies for communicating clearly with chart color.

    Strategy 1: Select a Custom Color Palette

    Rather than using Excel’s default colors, match your chart to the organization’s logo. (Consultants: Match your client’s logo, not your own.)

    For my grad school projects, I align everything with my university’s logo.

    Finding Additional Colors to Complement Your Logo Color

    Does the organization have a super basic color scheme? My grad school’s logo is green and yellow, which doesn’t give me many options to work with.

    So, I found a similar color palette on design-seeds.com.

    I used the instant eyedropper to find each color’s RGB code. Now I’ve got six colors to play with instead of just two.

    Logo with a coordinating color palette and RGB codes.

    Strategy 2: Make Sure the Colors are Intuitive

    Now, it’s time to apply those branding colors to ensure that your graph is intuitive.

    You’ll need to figure out whether your variable is categorical/nominal, sequential, or diverging.

    Categorical Variables Get Categorical Color Schemes

    Categorical or nominal variables are things like race/ethnicity (African American, Asian, Latino, White, etc.) or gender (male or female).

    Think about which pattern you want to emphasize, and use darker action colors to draw attention to that finding.

    Two examples of charts showing the same data in different ways.

    Sequential Variables Get Sequential Color Schemes

    Sequential or ordinal categories have a natural order, like age ranges (5-9 year olds, 10-14 year olds, and 15-19 year olds) or years (Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3 of an evaluation).

    Sometimes categories go from less to more or from nothing to something.

    An example of a nothing to something progression is a satisfaction survey question that asks program participants to assess how likely they are to recommend the program to a friend (not at all likely, somewhat likely, very likely).

    For these charts, the action color can represent the something and white can represent the nothing:

    Two charts showing the same data in different ways.

    Diverging Variables Get Diverging Color Schemes

    Diverging variables are opposites, like agree/disagree scales on surveys.

    An example is a similar satisfaction survey question that asks participants to indicate whether they agree or disagree with the statement “I’d recommend this program to a friend.”

    When charting divergent variables, you might design a diverging stacked bar chart, as shown below.

    Select two different colors from your palette, like greens for agreement and yellows for disagreement.

    The extreme values (strongly agree and strongly disagree) get the darker colors.Two charts showing the same data in different ways.

    Strategy 3: Declutter by Switching Black to Gray

    Which information is most and least important?

    Let’s declutter by removing or reducing anything without a crucial purpose. We want the reader’s attention focused on our most important patterns.

    For example, if you’re using Excel, you might improve upon the default settings by deleting the border, the grid lines, or the tick marks.

    If you decide to keep the grid lines or tick marks, try adjusting them from black to gray so they fade into the background.

    You can also remove the legend and put labels within the chart itself (like that first bar chart with race/ethnicity information).

    Finally, you can outline shapes in white to give the chart a crisper look and feel (like the diverging stacked bar chart shown above).

    Bonus: Download these Materials

    Want to create one of these charts? Download my Excel file below. 

    Download the Excel File
    More about Ann K. Emery
    Ann K. Emery is a sought-after speaker who is determined to get your data out of spreadsheets and into stakeholders’ hands. Each year, she leads more than 100 workshops, webinars, and keynotes for thousands of people around the globe. Her design consultancy also overhauls graphs, publications, and slideshows with the goal of making technical information easier to understand for non-technical audiences.

    21 Comments

  • Karen says:

    I wish I was a little more daring when it comes to color.
    I recently tried the color difference for emphasis for categorical data, and I’ve tried highlighting the outside of the bars a different color for emphasis.
    Thanks so much for all the tips!
    Karen

  • Oz du Soleil says:

    Really good post. What I really like is the simplicity. This is easy to implement and the result is huge.

    • Ann K. Emery says:

      Thanks Oz! There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of more comprehensive resources about color theory as it applies to data visualization. I tried to select a few of the easiest-to-implement tips that get us the biggest bang for our buck. Let me know if you apply any of the strategies and how they work out.

  • […] Nominal, Sequential, or Diverging? Simple Strategies for Improving Any Chart’s Colors […]

  • Megan says:

    Awesome post, Ann! This is very relevant to our work right now. We are publishing a series of briefs (starting in Word or Excel and then finalizing in InDesign). Do you know of any good tutorials on how to create a custom color template – and save it – in Microsoft products or InDesign?

  • Fernando says:

    Went right over to graphic design and got our company’s color palette. Any ideas for how to incorporate in “line graphs”?

    • Ann K. Emery says:

      Fernando,
      Great! I’d love to see some of your makeover charts — maybe you could tweet me an image when you’re done?
      For examples of using color effectively in line charts, check out Cole Nussbaumer’s blog: http://www.storytellingwithdata.com/ She often uses 1 or 2 colors (gray and blue) and adds just the right amount of contextual details (and in the right places, physically, on each graph) to give the reader the perfect amount of information about each pattern.
      Ann

  • Excellent post Ann! I’m thrilled to have just discovered my DigitalColor Meter on my Macbook Pro and have been having a wonderful time matching fonts and slide backgrounds to pictures I’ve chosen. You just mouse over anywhere and it give you RGB codes for each pixel! Who knew? Why ever didn’t I realize it was there before???

    • Ann K. Emery says:

      Sheila, What a useful built-in feature! My PC’s Microsoft Office 2013 products (like Excel, Word, & PowerPoint) also have a built-in color matching tool. These small features sure can save a lot of clicks (and therefore time and sanity!) I only have Office 2013 on one of the three computers I use, so in the meantime the Instant Eyedropper download continues to be my primary go-to color matching resource.

  • Angie says:

    Hey Ann! I often default to Stephen Few’s color palettes from his book Show Me the Numbers. Another tool similar to Eye Dropper is Color Cop – so handy!
    Love your example of divergent colors – good reminder to use color to my advantage when I’m working with this type of data!

  • […] week I shared strategies for improving any chart’s colors. One of the examples was a diverging stacked bar […]

  • Mynda says:

    Hi Ann,
    I’ve been using company logo colors (and the eyedropper tools) for years as inspiration for my dashboard reports. I like how you’ve taken it a step further and found similar colors using design-seed.com.
    Cheers,
    Mynda.

  • […] bold tone them down to pastel shades. Ann Emery has some great tips on the use of colour in her ‘Simple Strategies for Improving Any Chart’s Colors’ […]

  • […] week I shared strategies for improving any chart’s colors. One of the examples was a diverging stacked bar […]

  • […] For additional color resources, check out Nominal, Sequential, or Diverging: Simple Strategies for Improving Any Chart’s Colors. […]

  • Vienna says:

    This is exactly what I need! I often see graphs in our reports that have some very strange/distracting/meaningless colour palettes, but just have no idea how I should fix it. Thank you 🙂

  • […] Whether your viewers will really understand that diverging stacked bar chart, or whether you should just stick to a regular old stacked bar […]

  • […] very knowledgeable to not at all knowledgeable scale is ordinal so I selected one hue (blue, or green, or orange) and used darker and lighter versions of each hue to correspond to the […]

  • […] you’ll need to determine whether you want to add a categorical, sequential, or diverging palette. I’ll show you categorical. You can add the others as needed using the same […]

  • […] Agree/disagree survey scales are diverging variables so we need a diverging color palette. I selected two hues (blue and red). The most saturated version of each color goes on the outer poles. The only problem with this traditional approach is that the graph is a bit crowded. Where are the viewers supposed to look? What’s most important? When everything all at once is competing for attention, it’s easy to lose viewers. […]

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