Data Visualization

The Color System includes a built-in engine for generating categorical color palettes that harmonize with your theme. These palettes are designed for data visualization (charts, graphs, maps) where you need distinct colors to represent different categories.

The Problem

Standard color palettes (like “Tableau 10” or “D3 Category 10”) are great, but they often clash with your custom theme.

• If your theme is “Soft Pastel”, a neon chart looks out of place.
• If your theme is “High Contrast”, a subtle chart might be illegible.
• In Dark Mode, standard colors often lose contrast or look muddy.

The Solution: Harmonized Fixed Hues

Instead of using a fixed set of hex codes, we use a Harmonized Fixed Hues strategy:

1. Fixed Hues: We start with a curated list of distinct hues (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, etc.) to ensure every color is nameable and distinct.
2. Solved Lightness: We solve the lightness of each color against your page background to ensure it meets accessibility targets (APCA ~105).
3. Shared Chroma: We apply a consistent chroma (vibrancy) across the palette, which you can tune to match your brand.

Usage

The system generates CSS variables in the format --chart-N:

.my-chart {
  color: var(--chart-1); /* First color in the palette */
}

.my-chart-bar:nth-child(2) {
  background-color: var(--chart-2);
}

Configuration

You can customize the palette in your color-config.json:

{
  "palette": {
    "targetChroma": 0.12,
    "hues": [25, 45, 85, 125, 150, 190, 250, 280, 320, 360]
  }
}

• targetChroma: Controls the vibrancy. 0.12 is a safe default. Higher values (e.g., 0.18) are more vibrant but might be harder to balance in Light Mode.
• hues: An array of hue angles (0-360) to use for the palette.

Accessibility

Because the lightness is solved relative to the background:

• In Light Mode, the colors will be darker (like text) to stand out against the white page.
• In Dark Mode, the colors will automatically flip to be lighter (pastels) to stand out against the dark page.

This ensures your charts are always legible, regardless of the user’s theme preference.