Color theory is a fascinating field, part mathematics and physics and part human psychology. Between the two fields, visualization often finds itself stuck trying to sort out tricky issues with Colorbars and shading. Robert Kosara takes a look at some interesting psychological studies that look to see if the evolution of language has any impact on color perception.
The impact of language and higher-level concepts on visualization is the key to understanding how visualization actually works. Abstract concepts like color, shape, size, etc. seen in isolation elicit associations and embellishments that influence what we see and how we think about it.
These studies get a bit fishy at times: Do we distinguish colors better when they have names, or do we simply find it easier to give them names we already know? For example, it’s hard to call something “dark blue” without a “light blue” to compare it against? Nonetheless, these issues are at the heart of many visualization questions.
