Cheysson colour palettes

In 2019 RJ Andrews created a series of SVG patterns based on the late 1800s French Albums de Statistique Graphique by engineer and data visualization pioneer [Émile Cheysson(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Cheysson)].

The patterns were so lovely, but fiddly to incorporate into online charts. I wanted to make them more easily accessible to anyone making charts online, particulary those built in JavaScript or D3.

So I created an Observable notebook that provides all the palettes, with an easy couple of lines of code. The beautiful palettes are now easily available to anyone who uses Observable.

Have a look on the example map below!

For a detailed introduction to the palettes, the albums they were drawn from and background on their authors, please read RJ Andrew’s article from January 2020.