Practical Tableau

Chapter 88. Tip #3: Leverage Color

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way—things I had no words for.

Georgia O’Keeffe

During his keynote presentation at the 2014 Tableau Conference, Christian Chabot (Tableau co-founder and former CEO) talked about data analysis being a creative process. As an analyst, you may not think of yourself as an artist, but by its nature, data visualization is an art form. Visual analysts use data to express insights and provoke action. As Chabot put it, “Analysts and artists are both on a mission to reveal something new—to discover truth, to find meaning.” So if you are doing visual analytics, congratulations—you’re an artist! If that label makes you feel slightly uneasy, don’t worry, this chapter covers several tips on utilizing one of the most powerful forms of artistic expression: color.

While leveraging color is relatively easy to put into practice, it is also one of the most effective tools for discovering and sharing insights.

A Few Benefits of Leveraging Color in Your Data Visualization

• Color makes the stories in your data pop. The primary use of color is a practical one: it helps the insights in your data emerge, both for you and your audience. Color helps accomplish a shorter time to insight by providing (a) a means to identify dimension members so you can quickly recognize strong and poor performers (i.e., each categorical value can have a different color such as as West is colored orange, and ...