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Comment by brfox | Hacker News Reader

That's interesting... I seem to intuitively think that brighter/lighter is more popular and darker/dimmer is less popular. I wonder what the ratio is overall of people's perceptions. Upvote this comment if you think lighter is more popular (the parent comment had a vote of 8 when I posted this comment).

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Why? In all honesty I've never seen it done your way before. Lighter=weaker impact=less. Darker=stronger impact=more.

Especially as your using red! light red / pink is a very wishy washy colour and the darker reds draw the eye much more easily.

He's right actually, I just went to the site and went through the entire list thinking "Wow Brooklyn is more popular than you'd think", then I glanced down at the color legend and realized Darker meant "LESS" and kind of chuckled.

I agree with nickh. Darker should be more popular. Look at your Google Analytics chart: dark green means more visitors than light green. White means no data/no info. So that's a more natural gradation.

Without reading the legends, looking at the map, I almost expected the darker shade to be more popular, and when I clicked on results for more common hispanic names like Juan or so, I was surprised. And then read the legend to find that its other way round. But very kool app!

I would agree with you if the colors were against a dark background. But as it is, dark colors contrast more with the white/gray background, and thus get visual priority over the light colors.

I think it's a matter of bold vs less bold, not dark vs light.

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