Tracking issue: improve colour palettes in grapher

[HannahRitchie]

Problem

We believe that for a lot of charts, our colour palettes could be a lot better.

Technical issues

We have split out editorial issues (https://github.com/owid/owid-issues/issues/262) from technical issues. Only the technical issues are kept here:

• [x] #1514
• [ ] #1177
  • E.g. This chart say it shows change of GDP and emissions in Antarctica. But it does not show GDP change.
• [x] #1296
  • Some charts (here is another) have no color palettes associated to them, but it’d be nicer if they did.

[danielgavrilov]

This needs to be split up and understood a bit better how to tackle each of the points – I will try to do that.

[danielgavrilov]

@HannahRitchie (cc @maxroser) I edited the original issue:

• Under Technical issues are the things we can improve on the Grapher side
• Under Authoring issues are things that I think need to be fixed by chart authors. A developer can potentially help find instances that need fixing by querying the database.

Do you agree with the above? If so, each point in Authoring issues either belongs in owid-issues or should be a guideline for authoring charts.

[HannahRitchie]

Thanks @danielgavrilov.

Yes, I agree on the split between technical and authoring issues.

But I think a broader / the initial request on this from Max was to overall improve the colour palettes that are available in the grapher, and make these the default.

Relevant context: https://owid.slack.com/archives/C5BDCB2R3/p1647955976344679

[danielgavrilov]

Right, we can easily add more palettes, but removing existing ones is harder (when there are charts using them).

One way to split this issue up:

Removing palettes

• Extract a spreadsheet of all charts, include a ColorScheme column to filter by (devs) This will be helpful for finding all contexts that a color palette is used.
• Select all the "bad" palettes we want to get rid of (authors)
• Choose replacements for each bad palette (authors) This could be either applied in bulk (a palette gets replaced for another for all charts) or it could be done chart-by-chart basis (with help applying the changes from devs)
• Remove the bad palettes from Grapher completely (devs)

Alternative to all the above: Never remove palettes, just mark them in the dropdown options as obsolete. Then we don't have to go through this longer process, but we leave a bit of a mess behind.

Adding palettes

• Pick new palettes we want to add (authors)
• Add new palettes to Grapher (devs)
• Review added palettes in case we want to drop some of them (authors)
• Change the default palette for each chart (authors experiment with palettes, devs apply defaults)

@HannahRitchie does that division of tasks make sense? It's a little bit back-and-forth between teams. I can be the person doing the work on devs side, but do you think Max can be handling the authors tasks? Or should someone else be involved too?

[HannahRitchie]

@danielgavrilov great, that definitely makes sense.

I think @maxroser should be the one to select the new palettes we want to add, definitely. You can loop me in as co-pilot for selecting of "bad" palettes to get rid of. And for me to be the facilitator of back-and-forwards (especially if you need someone to nudge to hurry things up).

Does that make sense?

[larsyencken]

@HannahRitchie Gavrilov and I did a refactor of this card, moved the authoring issues back into owid-issues and called it a "project" for someone. Hopefully that makes it clearer how to move it all forward.

[larsyencken]

A guide for creating org color palettes by Lisa Charlotte Muth: https://blog.datawrapper.de/colors-for-data-vis-style-guides/

[danyx23]

@HannahRitchie I think we can close this issue? It looks like #1177 is still open but I think we don't need this tracking issue anymore.