Comments on: Close Races 2

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 05:00:31 +0000

Andreas - Excellent point, especially since one of my early posts was about using colors in Excel charts. I went to the custom palette I designed using the Color Brewer utility, and picked out a green/teal for Obama (the custom blue was too purple, gotta fix that).

If I were doing this chart for real, I'd do something a bit more elegant with the state name labels, but I thought this was better than the way a vertical dual category axis would have looked.

By: Andreas Lipphardt

Andreas Lipphardt — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:02:10 +0000

Hi Jon,

I have the feeling that you could improve the Bar colors slightly. The Obama
blue is too vivid compared to the Clinton red and clearly stands out.

Maybe
- a less saturated Obama blue R:112/ G:154/ B:209
- a more saturated, darker Clinton Red R:205/ G:97 / B:97

Andreas

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:40:06 +0000

Actually, I often use diamond markers instead of squares. In an XY chart, where there may be regions where points are overlapping, I use a foreground (marker border) color but no background (marker fill) color. This helps judge density of points, or multiple points in close proximity.

I’ve used the white foreground (marker border) color only rarely, but I’d expect it to make the markers stand out with respect to the lines.

By: Rod McInnis

Rod McInnis — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:03:55 +0000

I have a few favorite tricks to making line charts more readable. I set the marker Foreground color to white while using a matching marker background and line color. This brings more attention to the data point. (Sometimes I’ll use a lighter color for the line.) I also tend to use the diamond shaped marker because the corners of the diamonds correspond the the exact point being plotted.