Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_polygon_map
Political maps use 2-level coloring schemes.
Main color is selected as to avoid 2 neighbour
countries having the same color.
It's shade is selected randomly.
The problem is to select such N (N about 8) colors
generators,
and such colors for seas, rivers, city and country
labels,
and other objects (borders,
river/mountains/island/sea labels etc.),
that makes maps most readable.
Currently used scheme is: Colors for:
city dots white city labels white rivers #000060 seas #000060 country labels #FF8080
Color generator 0 # cyan $r = rand 64; $g = 160 + rand 64; $b = 160 + rand 64; Color generator 1 # green $r = 64 + rand 64; $g = 160 + rand 64; $b = 64 + rand 64; Color generator 2 # yellow-green $r = 128 + rand 32; $g = 192 + rand 64; $b = rand 32; Color generator 3 # greenish-blue $r = rand 32; $g = 64 + rand 64; $b = 128 + rand 64; Color generator 4 # yellow $r = 128 + rand 64; $g = 96 + rand 64; $b = rand 32; Color generator 5 # orange $r = 128 + rand 64; $g = 64 + rand 64; $b = rand 64; Color generator 6 # magenta $r = 160 + rand 64; $g = 64 + rand 64; $b = 160 + rand 64; Color generator 7 # gray $r = 96 + rand 64; $g = $r - 16 + rand 32; $b = $r - 16 + rand 32;
But it doesn't give very good results. Anyone with better idea for coloring ?
Hum.
I would say...put city dots and city labels in black. There is nothing such as black for readability.
Put all the oceans in white. On a higher scale map, it is quite more visible. You may distinguish the different continent much more easily. Think printability as well. No one like to kill his color printer with just one map :-)
I would also put rivers in white. It is much more visible as well.
Alternatively, a very clear blue. But you should try white.
If you keep the labels in white (rather than black), the background colors will always have to be very dark for the labels to be visible. If the labels are black, you keep basically all the possibilities you could wish in terms of coloring.
As for the different colors, well I can't speak automated generation. But what I would do (at least for a geographical atlas) would be to use shades varying between green and brown. Perhaps dark yellow. It might be enough to support non confusion between countries, without looking so strong and colorful.
Again, I would avoid too strong and flashy colors.
Some quick ideas (no generation) 52 104 38 45 155 17 73 231 33 124 213 152 190 228 172 110 154 89 101 173 23 143 173 23 147 201 29 223 245 195 175 255 206 120 135 102
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org