blog/lecture by Robert Simmon (below summary) by Suzanna Schmeelk
The OpenViz lecture by Robert Simmon was very good. I was particularly fascinated by the different color pallets available to programmers: LCH versus RGB and others. LCH has a richer transition of color choices and can quite nicely be paired against two pallets to represent two items sharing the same hue scale. Simmons discussed the "perfect pallet" (below) based on the work of Collin Ware.
In addition to the above, Simmon mentioned Color Blindness and that visualizations should be constructed to be read by as many people as possible. He referenced color blindness and how NASA used a color blind pallet for many years, citing the example below:
In addition to the OpenViz video, Simmons has written blogs. In both the video and the blog he mentioned the first Mars photo which turned out to be "paint by number" since it took so long to print they used pastels to map the colors (as seen below) before the actual image came off the printer:
Simmons blog post carefully documents his OpenViz lecture. One interesting point is in his interpretation of "Use Color to Separate Data from Non-Data." As seen in the below image he quotes, the use of the grey scale is easier for our eye to detect the changes of vegetation on land.
Simmons over all discussion is geared at making data visualization more literate for more people. One final point he makes that is quite interesting is that color choices across cultures can be interpreted quite differently. He cites the below research on interpretation of emotions and references the fact that "red" can be perceived differently in different cultures.
In summery, I really thought deeply about color: lightness, hue, and saturation deeply from this discussion. Thank you for the enlightenment.
Questions raised:
(1) Is culture important for interpretation of color? Does anyone have a good example?
(2) In your opinion will using the LCH pallet increase visualization literacy? Why/why-not.
(3) Did anyone have any addition suggestions about color choices based on their own personal experiences and/or readings?