Here together in one place: Three helpful color tools for data viz!
- ColorBrewer helps you come up with color schemes that are attractive, but in which the colors are nicely distinguishable from each other. Bonus: You can check if the schemes are colorblind-safe, print-friendly, and photocopiable! Fun to play with: http://www.colorbrewer2.org
- Instant Eyedropper is a very useful browser add-on you can install that allows you to copy colors that you see online (e.g., client logo colors): http://instant-eyedropper.com/
- And this one may not necessarily be professionally useful, but for color scheme inspiration for all kinds of purposes (decorating, knitting, whatever), I love Design Seeds: https://www.design-seeds.com/
And from Stephanie Evergreen, a timesaver that will blow your tiny little mind (or at least, it blew MY tiny little mind): You can save the Excel charts you create as templates for future use!!
I cannot tell you how much time I spend re-formatting charts for reports. I basically change every single horrible default option that Excel provides (bad colors, chartjunk, tiny/illegible fonts, stupid “Gee Whiz Graph” axis values, etc.), and I have to change these settings repeatedly for the different figures I make.
NO MORE! In the 5 minutes after reading Stephanie Evergreen’s blog post, I’ve already found and template-ified 2 charts I used in the past and like:
GRG PD 