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When drawing plots in R I need some "projector-friendly" colours for <10 qualitative variables.

Unfortunately, I have no access to projector to test the colours I have at the moment (ggplot -- defaults), but maybe someone can tell from experience?

zx8754
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user4786271
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    Have a look at [ColorBrewer](http://colorbrewer2.org/) website, there is also an R package. – zx8754 May 07 '15 at 16:45
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    ggplot2 already includes ColorBrewer palettes through the scale_color_brewer methods. – Ben May 07 '15 at 17:24
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    I don't agree that this is primarily opinion-based. The top answer has specific references and concrete advice based on actual constraints rather than preferences. – Adrian McCarthy Mar 31 '17 at 17:26

1 Answers1

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I have red-green color blindness, so I am deliberate in my choice of colors with ggplot2. I would suggest a gradient for your colors (e.g., blue-to-white or blue-to-black or grey-to-black). If you're lucky, your colors will be on some sort natural gradient (e.g., low values to high, even if your data is just on an ordinal scale).

Some other things to consider:

  • Will you be in a light room or dark room? This might help you to decide if you want to use whites or blacks or light or dark colors.
  • How nice of projector will you be using? If you don't know, err on the side of it not being nice and avoid too many or too small colors.
  • How big of room will you be in?
  • Perhaps you want symbols or even numbers for points. Will the audience be able to tell colors apart? See this post for an example.
  • If you can find 5 decent colors, use a lighter or darker version of the color (e.g., skyblue and navyblue make a nice pair)
  • Browse the ?colors() output in R or the ColorBrewer website and R package as noted by @zx8754

You might also want to check out presentation books such as Tufte, Reynolds or White. When I get stuck, I browse their webpages and books.

Also, if you include example figures, we could provide feedback on SO.

Community
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Richard Erickson
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    This is more of a comment as it asks a bunch of new questions of the OP without really providing an answer. I agree that these questions are important so perhaps the OP can edit to include the details. But it seems silly to assume that all projects produce the same image quality so i'm not sure the question is even answerable to begin with. – MrFlick May 07 '15 at 17:14
  • @MrFlick, You raise a couple of good points. Might [Cross-Validated](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) be a better venue because this is more of a data visualizing question than a coding question? Also, thanks for cleaning up the link (and list). – Richard Erickson May 07 '15 at 17:50
  • @MrFlick so what is your suggestion. What should I do to the question so it remains beneficial to others for future reference? – user4786271 May 08 '15 at 12:46