Response #5

For the National Land Cover Database’s map of “Land Cover Classes” why have any variation in shades for categories? (If “urban” is shown through four shades of red, what is the benefit to having four as opposed to one?)

“Visualizations should be as easy as possible to interpret, so try to find a color scheme that matches the audience’s preconceptions and cultural associations.”

Aside from using color to represent data that is based on physical occurrences which have a color already associated with them, is there an existing guide to what colors are associated with certain cultures?

Is there a way graphic designers gauge an audience’s preconceptions and cultural associations?

In creating intuitive palettes, do rules of lightness, as outlined in “Part 3: Different Data, Different Colors” still apply?

How could the Layering technique (“Instead, use muted colors to limit the range of hues and contrast in one dataset, and then overlay additional data, such as the contour lines and shaded relief of a topographic map combined with land cover, roads, and buildings.”) be applied to a data set that is not map dependent?