Palette/Colormap Options

Each of the included palettes has been checked with COBLIS, and should be legible for individuals with most common forms of color blindness. Best, though, is to check your specific figures’ readability, too.

Additional palettes and colormaps will be added moving forward. Is there a specific university you want considered for a future palette? Please open an issue with a link to the university’s branding guidelines.

The palette options (to now) are broken out by region below.

American Midwest

Universities in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

• Albion (Albion College)

• Indiana (Indiana University)

• MichiganState (MichiganState University)

• NIU (Northern Illinois University)

• Northwestern (Northwestern University)

• NotreDame (Notre Dame University)

• Oberlin (Oberlin College and Conservtory)

• OhioState (The Ohio State University)

• Purdue (Purdue University)

• Chicago (The University of Chicago)

• ChicagoBright (The University of Chicago)

• Illinois (University of Illinois)

• Iowa (University of Iowa)

• Kansas (University of Kansas)

• Michigan (University of Michigan)

• Minnesota (University of Minnesota)

• Nebraska (University of Nebraska)

• Wisconsin (University of Wisconsin)

And additional standalone colormaps:

American Northeast

Universities in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

• Amherst (Amherst College)

• Bowdoin (Bowdoin College)

• Brown (Brown University)

• BrownBright (Brown University)

• CarnegieMellon (Carnegie Mellon University)

• CarnegieMellonBright (Carnegie Mellon University)

• Colgate (Colgate University)

• Columbia (Columbia University)

• ColumbiaBright (Columbia University)

• Cornell (Cornell University)

• CUNY (City University of New York)

• Dartmouth (Dartmouth College)

• DartmouthMono (Dartmouth College)

• Harvard (Harvard University)

• Haverford (Haverford College)

• JohnsHopkins (Johns Hopkins University)

• JohnsHopkinsMono (Johns Hopkins University)

• MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

• MITBright (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

• Middlebury (Middlebury College)

• NYU (New York University)

• PennState (The Pennsylvania State University)

• Princeton (Princeton University)

• Rutgers (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)

• StonyBrook (The State University of New York at Stony Brook)

• Syracuse (Syracuse University)

• UConn (University of Connecticut)

• Maryland (University of Maryland)

• UMass (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

• UMassBright (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

• Penn (University of Pennsylvania)

• Pitt (University of Pittsburgh)

• Wellesley (Wellesley College)

• Yale (Yale University)

And additional standalone colormaps:

American Southeast

Universities in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington DC, and West Virginia.

• Duke (Duke University)

• GeorgiaTech (Georgia Institute of Technology)

• GSU (Georgia State University)

• NCState (North Carolina State University)

• Kentucky (University of Kentucky)

• UNC (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill)

• UNCBright (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill)

• UVA (University of Virginia)

• Vanderbilt (Vanderbilt University)

• WVU (West Virginia University)

American Southwest

Universities in Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas.

• ASU (Arizona State University)

• NMSU (New Mexico State University)

• Arizona (University of Arizona)

• Texas (University of Texas)

American West

Universities in Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

• Caltech (California Institute of Technology)

• CaltechBright (California Institute of Technology)

• HarveyMudd (Harvey Mudd College)

• OregonState (Oregon State University)

• Reed (Reed College)

• Stanford (Stanford University)

• Berkeley (University of California, Berkeley)

• UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles)

• Colorado (University of Colorado Boulder)

• Idaho (University of Idaho)

• Oregon (University of Oregon)

• USC (University of Southern California)

• Utah (University of Utah)

• Washington (University of Washington)

And additional standalone colormaps:

Canada

• McGill (McGill University)

• UBC (University of British Columbia)

• Toronto (University of Toronto)

United Kingdom

• QUB (Queen’s University Belfast)

• QUBBright (Queen’s University Belfast)

• Cambridge (University of Cambridge)

• Oxford (University of Oxford)

About the sample images: For sequential colormaps, the sample image is photometric HST data of the dwarf galaxy COSMOS-dw1 in F814W. The sample image for diverging colormaps is an HI velocity map of the galaxy M33 from GALFA-HI.

These palettes and colormaps are designed based on university branding guidelines instead of emphasizing perceptual uniformity. Most are still pretty good in this regard, but, just for everyone’s peace of mind, following matplotlib, the lightness of each colormap as a function of index is shown below (all sequential maps are shown dark-to-light for easier comparison).