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Vent: spent 5 months last year fighting a muddy chart because I picked the wrong 5 color palette
I was making a stacked line chart for a client in Denver last fall, and every time I tested it with colorblind users, three of my five lines looked like the same muddy brown against our light gray background. I kept tweaking the hex codes one at a time, thinking I just needed a slightly darker orange or a bluer green, and that took me 5 months of on and off work before a friend said to try the Okabe-Ito palette instead of my own guesses. Turns out I should have built the palette from a colorblind safe base from day one, not patched it after the fact. Has anyone else ditched their homemade palette for a known safe one mid project, and did you have to redo all your legends and labels too?
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pipergonzalez8d ago
5 months of tweaking hex codes one at a time sounds like you were just guessing in the dark, which is kind of the real problem there. Okabe-Ito is a solid pick but a muddy line on gray is more about contrast than the palette itself, so I'd check your background before blaming the colors. Changing a palette mid project usually means redoing the legend swatches at least, the labels themselves don't care what color they are.
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