How to choose a good color palette that is easy for the eyes, yet convey the deepness of the topic?

Question

This is the map of all topics my project discusses:

_{Click for full screen. SVG file}

Here are the feedback of the viewers:

• Person 1: The color is painful to the eyes
• Person 2: The graphic is quite hard to look at
• Person 3: If the circles have lighter colors then they will like it more

So I then try another couple palettes that consist all light colors from Coolors:

But I don't see how they fit. The reasons I choose staged circles to present the information are:

• Each group of topics has a another group of topics lurking beneath
• All topics are interconnected, even though they are in different groups

My hypothesis is that light colors cannot convey the feeling of deepness/complicatedness. However, as the feedback says, dark colors may be quite hard to look at. Do you have any recommendations?

Answer 1

My two cents.

A. Keep the palette monochromatic unless you want some other meaning than "Deep". You could use any color, but normally, a warm color will give you the additional meaning of "Hot", green of nature. Using blue could reference the sea, where darker blue means "deeper".

B. Keep the colors, either light enough or dark enough so you do not need to change the color of the text for contrast. But if you need the meaning "Deep" I would keep the dark palette.

C. Keep the colors saturated, especially on the inner circle, unless your concept of "Deep" also means "dark" or "murky"

D. Only use a multi-color palette if you add another meaning, like "urgency".

That is to answer the question, but you need to work a lot on the way you arrange the texts.

---

Not asked, but for the texts:

E. Try using a condensed font, this way you can make it bigger, in a more compact block of text.

F. Use bold text if you are using a dark background.

G. If you can reduce the space between letters, the kerning.

---

H. You have longer words than others, so try to maximize the size of the text using different zones of the circle.

I. You could try using another shape than the circle.

J. You could also rotate the text, but it can complicate the reading if you are not careful.

K. Ideally, you integrate the text on the circle, not "just put the text there" but this depends on the software you are using and the time and expertise you have with it.

The overall idea is to maximize the size and readability of the texts. Probably the users are struggling more about this rather than the palette itself.

---

Also, each shape means something. As you have the subsection in magenta, it looks that you are zooming in the center part (L).

See if you mean that or in reality, it is just a percentage of the outer circle, so you need to use the center of the circle for the lines to converge. (M)

Answer 2

All that coloring scheme is distracting and you need to keep people's focus on the content, not the random candy rainbow thing. Reduce the color scheme to a single color, in my example below, 8% of "C" blue, set everything to multiply, and play with something like this.

The graphic needs to support, but not take over, the content.

That, or try a softer combo of more or less random colors, like:

Answer 3

I've got a few suggestions:

• It's not just the background that can change colour, you could also change the colour of the text
• The background doesn't have to be areas of solid colour, the shapes could be white with a coloured outline or a pale colour with a dark outline, for instance
• The background areas could be various tints of the same colour, rather than all different colours

All of the above (or a combination of one or more) could help to make the diagram less busy and overwhelming.

I would also consider a different layout. Maybe a stack or pyramid type layout might be clearer than the concentric circles.