Colors

Explore how color assignments work in Mappica.

Overview

Colors play a crucial role in data visualization by distinguishing categories, highlighting patterns, and providing a more intuitive and engaging visual experience. In Mappica, colors are assigned to data in Charts, Maps, and Tables, and these colors can be inherited and displayed by connected elements, such as Filters, Selectors, and Legends.

This page provides a guide to configuring colors in Mappica, based on factors like the type of chart, map, or table, the selected data format (long or wide), and whether colors are being derived from a categorical or numeric dataset field.

Colors in Charts and Maps

You can configure colors in the Color section of the right panel using the following options:

For charts and maps that use Wide Data format, separate colors can be assigned to each of the selected series. Colors are also assigned in pie and donut charts in this way.

For charts and maps that use Long Data format (excluding pie and donut charts), you can specify a Color Field in the Colors section of the right panel. The configuration options will depend on whether you select a text or numeric field:

If you select a text field, colors are assigned categorically, to each unique text value in that dataset column.
If you select a numeric (number, percent, or currency) field, colors are assigned continuously. In this case, you can select a Color Gradient, a Domain, and a Color Scale, which are detailed in the Continuous Colors section below.

From left to right, the Color section of the right panel for charts and maps using (1) Wide Data format, (2) Long Data format with a text field assigned to the Color Field, and (3) Long Data format with a numeric field assigned to the Color Field.

Colors in Tables

In tables, you can choose to assign colors to cells, rows, or columns.

Cells: select this option to assign colors based on cell values in specified column(s). You can create one Color Scheme for your entire table, or multiple schemes if cells in some columns should follow a different color scheme to cells in other columns. Within each scheme, assign the following:

Color Format: assign colors to either the "Background", "Text", or a "Pill."
Color Fields: colors will be assigned to fields you select here. Once one column has been added, you can only select other fields of the same type. If you select a field that is not displayed in the table, you will need to add it (in the Dataset section of the right panel).
If the selected Color Fields are text fields, colors can be assigned categorically to each unique text value across all of the selected fields.
If the selected Color Fields are numeric (number, percent, currency, or measurement) fields, colors are assigned continuously and you can specify a Color Gradient, Domain, and Color Scale (see the Continuous Colors section).

Rows: choose this option to assign colors to the background of an entire row based on a specified Color Field. This can be either a text field (in which case colors are assigned categorically) or a numeric field (in which case colors are assigned continuously).

Columns: select this option to assign colors to the column header of each series field. The Color Format allows these colors to be displayed either as a "Background" or "Top Border." If a Selector element is connected to the table, it will display the assigned column colors, assuming color formatting is enabled and no other connected elements have precedence in assigning colors.

If you wish to turn off color formatting in a table, return to the default color assignment (cells) and remove any existing color schemes.

Categorical Colors

Whenever you select a text field as the Color Field in Mappica, or are assigning colors to Series Fields, or are assigning colors in a Pie or Donut chart, you will be able to select colors for each category under the Colors section of the right panel.

By default, each category is assigned colors from the default Mappica palette or, for Pro users, any "Default Theme Colors" specified under Chart Elements on the Theme page.

MAPPICA Pro

Pro users can click the Generate Colors button to quickly assign colors to each category. The system first assigns colors based on mappings in the Lookups page. Any remaining categories are then assigned colors by AI, which considers the semantic meaning of category names while attempting to maintain color contrast and avoiding color repetition. The AI prioritizes colors from your custom palette, using the default Mappica palette only if necessary.

Continuous Colors

Whenever you choose a numeric field as the Color Field, you will need to configure a Color Gradient, Domain, and Color Scale to ensure the numeric field maps appropriately onto a set of colors:

Color Gradient: Select either a "Predefined" or "Custom" gradient. Predefined gradients include many commonly used gradients available in D3's Scale Chromatic module and on ColorBrewer. Custom gradients allow you to specify your own series of colors.

Domain Minimum and Maximum: Choose the lower and upper boundary of the value range used by the color gradient. If no domain values are specified, the smallest and largest values in the selected Color Field will be used by default.

The map below shows an example of a map with a minimum domain value of 0 and a maximum domain value of 200,000. By default, a yellow-green color gradient is applied, with yellow mapped to data values of 0 and green mapped to data values of 200,000. Other data values are assigned colors based on the selected Color Scale through a process called interpolation.

The three buttons above this choropleth map demonstrate different ways of incorporating colors. In the "Linear" and "Discrete" examples, a numeric field has been selected as the Color Field, with the color scale set to "Linear" or "Discrete", respectively. In the "Categorical" example, a text field has been selected as the Color Field, resulting in categorical color assignments.

Color Scale: Choose from "Linear", "Discrete", "Square Root", "Logarithmic", or "Bi-symmetric Logarithmic" scales:

The Linear scale maps values evenly across the color gradient. This is the default scale, and works well for evenly distributed data.
The Discrete scale divides the color gradient into bins, assigning each bin a distinct color. If you are using a predefined gradient, you will be able to choose the total number of Color Bins. If you have created a custom gradient, a bin will be created for each color you add.
The Square Root scale applies a square root transformation, enhancing the visibility of smaller values while moderately compressing higher ones. It can be suitable for dataset fields with dense low values and/or high outliers, and provides a less extreme adjustment compared to the Logarithmic scale.
The Logarithmic scale uses a logarithmic transformation, which scales down high values exponentially and makes differences among smaller values more apparent. This can work well for dataset fields spanning multiple orders of magnitude but is unsuitable for fields containing zero or negative values.
The Bi-symmetric Logarithmic scale handles both positive and negative values symmetrically, applying a logarithmic transformation away from zero while keeping values near zero linear. This can be helpful for dataset fields with wide-ranging positive and negative numbers.

Overview
Colors in Charts and Maps
Colors in Tables
Categorical Colors
Continuous Colors