Pop Dashboards: Playing with Color in Tableau
I recently got asked about color palettes when I posted a sample to Twitter. Tableau allows you to customize your preferences file (scary .tps file with the gear on it), so I spent the day redoing mine, since my hard drive crashed melted. I guess that’s one way to reset your digital life…
Here’s my favorite tricks to color palettes:
- Go here and download. Follow it to the letter.
- Go get ColorTool.
- Spend a night and make stuff you like.
Now, like a kid, I had to muddy the bike and bend the rims before I could share it. It’s a thing…
I decided to revisit this dashboard for fun.
The original VizMix.
Using my 901 color palettes, I decided to go Andy Warhol on it.
GREEN!!!!!!! And Purple!
I love green. No one else does, it has a bad rap for being rather nasty to the color blind, and if you put this one in the tester, YIKES! You can give it a whirl if you want the pain. I had to get it out of my system just once. This would likely never fly, but sometimes, we gotta try.
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This might fly…
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Restoration Hardware version. I kinda like it.
I drift towards odd shades of blues in dashboards. And greys. And brown. I could probably get away with this somewhere, if I haven’t already.
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All the colors of clay! How I like to play.
I usually avoid red like the plague. A. it’s wicked hard on eyes. B. I was NEVER allowed to wear it while interpreting (see A). C. There’s a certain type of blindness that is massively irritated by red. Orange isn’t too far behind and it’s one of those colors I’ve never been able to wear well. Of course, I had to try it. D. Color blindness – another scary one in the tester.
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NOT interpreter friendly!
Since I went orange, I had to go dark in the background. I like this, too, and I might be able to pull a part of this off somewhere. Maybe…
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A less extreme version. It reminds me of some of my audio gear.
I won’t lie – I had too much fun with this one. A. It’s got some of my favorite colors for dashboards. I inverted my scales on all the dark dashboards so the light pops as the large number and the heat map looks like something I’d put in my kitchen as a splash guard. B. It’s a dark dashboard and I love ’em. C. The bar/line chart looks like something I’d see while running sound.
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Had to.
Like green, I rarely seem to get to use purple. Of course, I had to here. And as vibrant as possible without turning pink.
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I had fun. Live versions below with a gift inside.
