In Context
How to Use
Use the palette chooser to create a series of colors that are visually equidistant. This is useful for many data visualizations, like pie charts, grouped bar charts, and maps.
Note: there are two other modes besides palette mode – check out single-hue scales and divergent scales as well.
Creating visually equidistant palettes is basically impossible to do by hand, yet hugely important for data visualizations. Why? When colors are not visually equidistant, it’s harder to (a) tell them apart in the chart, and (b) compare the chart to the key. I’m sure we’ve all looked at charts where you can hardly use the key since the data colors are so similar.
For instance, Google Analytics does a terrible job with this:
Just try to use this key. I dare you.
It’s better to use use a range of hues so users can cross-reference with the key easier. It’s far simpler for our brains to distinguish, say, yellow from orange than blue from blue-but-15%-lighter.
Ahh! Much better.
This color picker allows you to specify both endpoints of the palette. You can choose at least one to be a brand color, which gives you significant flexibility in creating a palette that will work for your visualizations, yet be customized for your brand.
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