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Get better at using color palettes with choropleth maps

The intensive and creative way to practice with color palettes.

Kai Wong
UX Collective
A map of the US at night from space. The east side is filled with lights while the west side is less lit up with the exception of the West coast.
Photo by NASA on Unsplash

We often don’t get the chance to practice working with custom color palettes as UX Designers. There’s often company branding or a style guide that guides many of our color choices, which means we don’t have much chance to work with color palettes and gradients.

However, a popular data visualization can help you practice working with these color concepts more effectively: Choropleth maps. You’ve probably seen some (or even made some) without knowing the actual name of it.

A Custom choropleth map, colored in different shades of blue according to county.
https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-create-outstanding-custom-choropleth-maps-with-plotly-and-dash-49ac918a5f05

But creating a good choropleth map requires a strong understanding of how color can affect a reader’s perception of data. But to get started, we first need to talk about starting with choropleth maps.

What are choropleth maps used for

It may be tempting to say that any data involving geography should involve creating a choropleth map, but that’s not quite right.

We can only use choropleth maps when we want to understand patterns with geographic data. The main…

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