Open Source R Design Software

This repository is a curated collection of color palettes crafted or curated for data visualization in R. The goal is to provide designers, data scientists, and R users with aesthetically pleasing, perceptually consistent color schemes that work well for plots, maps, and graphics. The repo contains static files listing palette definitions (e.g. hex codes, named hues), sample visualizations showing how each palette performs under different contexts (categorical, sequential, diverging), and helper functions/scripts to import or use the palettes in R. The author also documents palette provenance and usage guidance (contrast, readability, colorblind friendliness). While not a full package in itself, it’s often used as a reference or source of palette definitions for other R plotting or theming packages.

MetBrewer is an R package that provides color palettes inspired by artworks and collections in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met). The idea is to draw on the rich visual heritage of fine art to generate palettes that are aesthetically pleasing and grounded in real-world artistic color usage. The palettes are curated, named after artworks or styles, and often include notes about colorblind-friendliness and contrast. The package supports both discrete and continuous palette types, with interpolation when more colors are requested than originally defined. It also provides ggplot2-friendly scale functions (scale_color_met_c, scale_fill_met_d, etc.) so integration into typical R plotting workflows is smooth. Internally, the package includes functions to list available palettes, check which are colorblind-friendly, and visualize all palettes at once.

ggthemes is an R package that provides extra themes, scales, and geoms for ggplot2. It supplements the default ggplot2 offerings by allowing users to apply special themes (e.g., inspired by classic publications, external visualization styles), additional scale functions, and specialized geoms or color scales. It is often used to make ggplot2 plots adhere to aesthetic styles from famous news outlets, scientific journals, or presentation decks. Additional color scales and palettes for discrete and continuous data to match theme aesthetics. Extensive documentation and examples for each theme / scale so users can see how plots look and tweak them.

paletteer is an R package by Emil Hvitfeldt that aggregates color palettes from many other R packages, providing a unified, streamlined interface to access discrete, continuous, and dynamic palettes. It is intended to simplify choosing color schemes when plotting, remove the friction of remembering different palette package APIs, and make high‐quality color aesthetics more accessible. Some palettes change depending on the number of colors requested; the ability to reverse palettes. Support both discrete palettes (fixed number of colors) and continuous palettes (interpolated).