ColorWise

Chapter 8. Color and Cultural Design Considerations

As we have talked about in previous chapters, colors carry weight across different cultures with different meanings. That is a tricky thing to realize when working in data visualization, especially if you’ve lived or worked in one country for a long time and have culture-laden connotations about what each color means.

Colors give specific definitions to different population segments. For instance, in the US, if you see green electrical wires, they are known for grounding a current. If you see a delivery truck driving around with a brown paint job, you know it’s a representative of UPS. And if your computer monitor suddenly goes blue, you know it’s time to get out the credit card because you’ve just encountered the Blue Screen of Death and you are in need of a new computer.

Again, be aware of your audience! The world is growing bigger and bigger in terms of population, but our remarkable achievements in technology have shrunk the space between us like never before. Making a business call from New York City to Tokyo a few decades ago would have seemed like an enormous chore. Now it can be done free of charge within seconds via the likes of Skype or Zoom.

Build the portfolio of who you are constructing visualizations for and use that as your base of operations to design something that keeps the focus where you want it. Let’s discuss some other examples to build a knowledge base around.

Yellow

In Western cultures like the US, ...