Hi. When it is said >3 colours per visualisation are a bad idea, do the three colours exclude shades of the same colour, e.g in some of your examples you have light orange, dark orange, light blue and dark blue, does this count as two colours or four? Thanks!

Hi Ibtisaam, that's a great question! Indeed, when we have orange and two shades of blue we're using two different colors. That also means we've kept the under three colors rule. You'll notice throughout the course, that sometimes we rely on completely different colors for different categories and sometimes we rely on shades of one or two contrasting colors. The idea of using shades of the same color is to have more cohesion within the chart. The only thing to take into account when using shades of the same color is not to have too many categories which are very similar in color - that will make them hard to distinguish, especially for people who are seeing the chart for the first time, and from far away (say during a presentation). Hope this helps! Best, 365 Eli

Thank you! I feel I am not naturally "visually" inclined, so I found knowing the theory about colour very helpful as well as the coolors link etc. Really enjoying this course :)