Color and Information

Color and Information

Announcements
Readings for next lecture:

Narratives of Space and Time

Questions?
The Structure of Today’s Lecture

Color and Information II:

Key Concepts
Exercises

Project Proposals

Color and Information II
Key Concepts: (Color and Information II)
In all 50 or so systems of color organization, every color is located in three-space...(p. 88)
computer displays are low-resolution devices, working at extremely thin data densities, 1/10 to 1/000 of a map or book page (p.89)
Third rule:

large area background or base-colors should do their work most quietly, allowing the smaller, bright areas to stand out most vividly, if the former are muted, grayish or neutral. (p. 90)

Fourth rule:

If a picture is composed of two or more large, enclosed areas in different colors, then the picture falls apart.
Unity will be maintained, however, if the colors of one area are repeatedly intermongled in the other,...All colors of the main theme should be scattered like islands in the background color."(p.90)

"to see is to forget the name of the thing one sees" (p. 92)
Transparent and effective deployment of redundant signals requires,

first, the need –an ambiguity or confusion in seeing a data display that can in fact be diminished by multiplicity
–and, second, the appropriate choice of design technique (from among all the various methods of signal reinforcement) that will work to minimize the ambiguity of reading. (p. 94)

Exercise
Color and Information question:

Tufte asks "What palette of colors should we use to represent and illuminate information?" and states "A grand design is to use ..."
To use What? Why? Which? and How?

Answer: use colors found in nature
Project Proposals

Back to you...

Discussion of proposals
The End