Cynthia A. Brewer is an American

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professor ...

geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, a ...

at the

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a public state-related land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvania. Founded in 1855 as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania, Penn State becam ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, Ma ...

, and author. She has worked as a map and atlas design consultant for the

U.S. Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of the ...

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. T ...

, National Center for Health Statistics, and

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government within the United States Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of ...

. She teaches courses in introductory cartography and map design. Her specialism relates to visibility and color theory in

cartography Cartography (; from grc, χάρτης , "papyrus, sheet of paper, map"; and , "write") is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an ...

. She also works on topographic map design, multi-scale mapping, generalization, and atlas mapping. She has been influential as a theorist for map representations and

GIS A geographic information system (GIS) is a type of database containing geographic data (that is, descriptions of phenomena for which location is relevant), combined with software tools for managing, analyzing, and visualizing those data. In a ...

professionals. Her web, print, and

colorblind Color blindness or color vision deficiency (CVD) is the decreased ability to see color or differences in color. It can impair tasks such as selecting ripe fruit, choosing clothing, and reading traffic lights. Color blindness may make some aca ...

-friendly set of colors known as ColorBrewer colors have been used by numerous projects.Stephen D. Gardner, 2005
Evaluation of the ColorBrewer Color Schemes for Accommodation of Map Readers with Impaired Color Vision
(6.1MB PDF) She is the creator for the Apache 2.0 licensed web application ColorBrewer.

Education

She graduated from

McMaster University McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood and Westdale, adjacent to the Royal Botanical ...

(Ontario, Canada) in 1979 and

University of Guelph , mottoeng = "to learn the reasons of realities" , established = May 8, 1964 ()As constituents: OAC: (1874) Macdonald Institute: (1903) OVC: (1922) , type = Public university , chancellor ...

(Ontario, Canada) in 1983. She did her master's degree in geography with emphasis in cartography at

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...

, 1983 to 1986, presenting a thesis titled ''The Development of Process-Printed Munsell Charts for Selecting Map Colors''. After a year at

University of California at Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the Un ...

, she obtained her doctorate from Michigan State University in 1991. Her dissertation was ''Prediction of Surround-Induced Changes in Map Color Appearance''.

Academic career

She was visiting lecturer at the

, Department of Geography during the year 1986/87. On completing her doctorate she was assistant professor, for three years (1991 to 1994) at

San Diego State University San Diego State University (SDSU) is a public research university in San Diego, California. Founded in 1897 as San Diego Normal School, it is the third-oldest university and southernmost in the 23-member California State University (CSU) syste ...

. She joined the

, Department of Geography in 1994 and has been professor since 2007 and head of department since 2014. She has been a faculty member of the Center of Excellence for Geospatial Information Science (CEGIS), U.S. Geological Survey, Department of Interior, since 2008.

ColorBrewer

Choosing effective

colour schemes In color theory, a color scheme is the choice of colors used in various artistic and design contexts. For example, the "Achromatic" use of a white background with black text is an example of a basic and commonly default color scheme in web de ...

for thematic maps, (or

Choropleth A choropleth map () is a type of statistical thematic map that uses pseudocolor, i.e., color corresponding with an aggregate summary of a geographic characteristic within spatial enumeration units, such as population density or per-capita i ...

s) is unexpectedly complex. A sequence of colors has to be selected to represent the data. For deciles, ten related colors must be selected. These colors can be chosen according to schemes such as ''sequential'', ''diverging'' and ''qualitative'' (categorical). The results must consider the end-use environment for the map (e.g., CRT, LCD, printed, projected, photocopied). There are five colour specification systems with numbers commonly written in hexadecimal and decimal. ColorBrewer is an online tool designed to take some of the guesswork out of this process by helping users select appropriate colour schemes for their specific mapping needs. It was launched in 2002. It is licensed using Apache 2.0 software license, which is similar to

CC-BY-SA 3.0 A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...

. In 2018, climate scientist Ed Hawkins chose the eight most saturated blues and reds from the ColorBrewer 9-class single-hue palettes in his design of

warming stripes Warming stripes (sometimes referred to as climate stripes, climate timelines or stripe graphics) are data visualization graphics that use a series of coloured stripes chronologically ordered to visually portray long-term temperature trends. Wa ...

graphics, which visually summarize

global warming In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in a broader sense also includes ...

as a sequence of stripes.

Brewer palettes

Valid names and a full color representation for each palette are shown below. If this is viewed in a compliant browser, moving the mouse cursor over each box will pop up the corresponding color number as a

tooltip The tooltip, also known as infotip or hint, is a common graphical user interface (GUI) element in which, when hovering over a screen element or component, a text box displays information about that element, such as a description of a button's ...

. *YlGn
*YlGnBu
*GnBu
*BuGn
*PuBuGn
*PuBu
*BuPu
*RdPu
*PuRd
*OrRd
*YlOrRd
*YlOrBr
*Purples
*Blues
*Greens
*Oranges
*Reds
*Greys
*PuOr
*BrBG
*PRGn
*PiYG
*RdBu
*RdGy
*RdYlBu
*Spectral
*RdYlGn
*Accent
*Dark2
*Paired
*Pastel1
*Pastel2
*Set1
*Set2
*Set3

Further research

Most of this work is applicable to computer based GIS work. Leading from the original work, investigations have been made into schemes for differing types of

ness. Other

cartographer Cartography (; from grc, χάρτης , "papyrus, sheet of paper, map"; and , "write") is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an i ...

s in this field include

Gretchen N Petersen Gretchen (, ; literal translation: "Little Grete" or "Little Greta") is a female given name of German origin that is mainly prevalent in the United States. Its popularity increased because a major character in Goethe's '' Faust'' (1808) has t ...

and Cindy's mentor

Judy M Olson Judy is a short form of the name Judith. Judy may refer to: Places * Judy, Kentucky, village in Montgomery County, United States * Judy Woods, woodlands in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom Animals * Judy (dog) (1936–1950), ...

, Professor Emerita of Geography, Michigan State University.

References

Publications

Books

* * *

Articles

* * * * *
An Evaluation of Color Selections to Accommodate Map Users with Color-Vision Impairments

External links

Personal website

ColorBrewer2.org
— tool for selecting color palettes {{DEFAULTSORT:Brewer, Cynthia Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American geographers Pennsylvania State University faculty Color scientists Geographic information scientists