Today I had two more conversations with people who replied to the color survey: One with an economist from Sydney, the other with a data vis developer from an U.S. newsrooms. Both were really, really nice.
One thing I didn’t expect: More than half of the conversations I’ve had were more or less about organizational style guides and color palettes – some of my interviewees were unhappy with the one they had to use; some were in the process of creating them or just finished doing so.
Maaaany months ago (ok, not just months: 1.5 years ago, in Summer 2020) I started working on a blog post about “How to build a color palette for a style guide”. I interviewed some people and drafted something.
Then I thought: “Wait – it will need to talk about how to choose beautiful colors, but I haven’t written about that”, so I wrote about that.
Then I thought: “Wait – I still can’t write about style guides because it will also need to explain color scales and which kind of colors to choose for what”, so I wrote about that.
I always knew I wanted to finish that style guide blog post before (and for) the book. But talking to all these people gave me a new incentive to just do that. And lots of tips! I feel like a big aggreator machine that takes the insides and advices and anecdotes of what worked and doesn’t from lots of people, and then summarises them in one blog post. (It feels great.)
And: All these little insights and anecdotes etc. from the interviews already make my book so much better. Today I sat down and transferred my handwritten notes to a structured document – and from there, I put the most important insights, pain points, phrasings, etc. in that big Google Doc of mine called “THE BOOK”. I sorted them into the color principles they fit in, or added new principles for things I haven’t thought of or haven’t found as important as my interviewees (I added quite a new chapters). It’s super nice to see the book grow like that.