There are some tips and tricks to help your charts stand out better for practical readability.
Crypto Otsukimi · Follow
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Before you read, a quick mention that this article became way longer than expected. As a result, I made a mini table of contents to for TLDR purposes. Forgive the length.
Also, Part Four shows examples of charts from Crypto Twitter that have great themes if you want to look at those specifically.
____________________________________Table of Contents
Part One: Concepts of Design
Part Two: Practical Chart Design Patterns
Part Three: Duality of Design
Part Four: Crypto Twitter Design Examples
If you’ve spent any significant time in the cryptocurrency trading space, using charts to decipher price actions have become a holistic part of your habits. Somewhere along the line you’ve likely questioned your own pattern of trading with the default colors or have seen someone using different themes of colors of their own. This article contains information to why redesigning your charts for themes and custom design of helpful, if not necessary, for readability — both for others to read and for yourself to wonder what you were thinking perviously.
My goal here is to explain the importance of design in charts, samples of good charts (in my opinion) and tips/tricks to help your charts have better readability and potentially increase user engagement.
Content Is What Matters
Before I get started, I really want to throw shade on my own article. Ultimately, customizing is an optional art-form and that content matters most. I’ve seen some messy charts that I throughly enjoy because they have so much deep content. This article just presents a way to clean up if possible, but also not necessary since people that see your charts have to interpret their own information for their own research.
This is a slight detour of my usual articles, but I felt it’s worth a look. It’s also a fun side step away from the seriousness of trading. It’s also good for your eyes (which we will read shortly).
Let’s begin.
The Idea of Design
The concept of design is something very simple but often overlooked. We have wonderfully designed brains that can distinguish between shapes, colors, and patterns. When we place all these together, we can create masterful themes that can help us register more information or simply provide enhanced mood. Design is mandatory within existence because of the concept of contrast and correlation. If I can distinguish a circle from a square, I’ve noticed a difference in its existence despite both being a shape. Thus, I’ve discovered design. I can then place five circles of different colors to create something like the Olympics symbol. It’s quite fascinating, but the philosophy of design and color is too much to cover in the article (and beyond the bounds of its scope).
Why Design Matters
Design matters because creating different patterns and themes for something, primarily charts for crypto in this case, can help the effectiveness of what’s being communicated. For now on, I’ll refer design concepts in the rest of this article to crypto charts specifically.
Design within charts mater because:
- Colors, if placed within a theme or pattern, can help the observer understand your chart based on stereotypes typically associated with that chart. For example, green and red candlesticks are respectfully associated with up and down price movements.
- Colors can be used to create reading longevity. Reading white text on a black background (read: night mode) is easier to read than red text on a black background (which creates that creepily annoying pop-up feeling).
- Colors, can be used in patterns to associate mood. Cooler colors, like blues and greens, can feel calmer than reds and yellows. This is why many companies like Apple and Walmart pick their whites and blues.
- Colors can create ascetic themes for familiarity. Color combinations can be more pleasing than others because of their associated pair on the color chart. Green and red candlesticks can work because they are opposites on the color wheel (and symbolize stop and go signal lights), just like blue/orange and yellow/purple contrast well. Black and white is also a good contrasting option. This also works in hues, shades, and sheens like matte color groups, bold colors, or pastels.
- Shapes also help with mood. Anything with edges can hinder your thinking if a reader is sensitive to those design patterns, but squares and rectangles can help bring out logical readability as well. Straight lines help find logical outcomes on charts, to create indicators, and read price action.
- Spacing can also help with readability and mood. This is one of the reasons Fibonacci retracement lines and Ganns look so appealing, other than the fact they are logically useful.
Colors and Color Matching
Ultimately, the decision is yours to chose what colors you wish to use for your charts. You will be staring at your own charts more than anyone else. That being said, if you’ve read this far you’re likely interested in some ideas. One of the best ideas overall is creating a color scheme. Matching complimentary colors or at least a consistent use of colors for the same functions will increase your content readability tenfold.
For example:
- If you make support and resistance lines the same color, I will know that for the most part, those lines will generally be S&R lines. Some people I’ve seen on CT use one color for support and a different one for resistance (DonAlt comes to mind). That can always be helpful for effective quick glancing to see where the price action is.
- Some, like myself, use the same colors for S&R but different colors for higher timeframes. I’ve used magenta for monthly, white for weekly, and dark grey for daily — colors that start with the same letter at their respective timeframes. This is intentional so users can habitually associate colors with content.
Good colors to match are:
- Black and white: these colors provide the highest contrast because they are the most opposite of any color (white reflects all colors on the spectrum while black absorbs all colors).
- Black grey and sepia: the advantage of colors like sepia is its a very easy color on the eyes from an otherwise spectrum of colors on our high resolution screens.
- Red/green, blue/orange, and yellow/purple: these are opposites on the color wheel.
- Yellow/orange and blue/purple: these are mixes of primary and secondary colors but they are close relatives on the prism spectrum (ROY G. BIV).
- Black and White plus one color: red for example can go with black and white
- One color with different shades: blue, dark blue, sky blue, and blue grey are all part of the same color yet distinguishable.
It’s also important to remember that 100% white or black can be too bright or too dark. It’s practical to consider one shade lower or reduce its alpha levels (transparency) to 80% or lower. 20% is useful for very subtle coloring. Sepia is often a good choice once again because it’s a color that’s very good on the eyes (looks like a old book).
Backgrounds, Bands, and Ichimoku
Colors and themes also matter when using backgrounds and screen filled indicators like Bollinger Bands and Ichi Clouds. Generally the best rule of thumb here for backgrounds, bbands, and clouds depend on what you want people to see.
For a background, the purpose is well….in the back. A good background is one that isn’t noticeable because its colored to bring attention to the foreground. White, blacks, greys, and sepias are often the optimal choices here, but not always. Any color of a matte look can work as well. The most unlikely candidates are bolds and neons.
Bollinger Bands and Ichi Clouds are similar but can stand out more if that’s what your focus is meant to draw in. Personally, price action, candlesticks, and horizontals are primary content, so on Bands, the more subtle they are, the more likelihood your candles and price action will be given attention. Giving a shade or two higher or lower for your Bands is a good compliment. For Ichi clouds, they typically have more than one color. A shade or two away from the candlestick colors is a good option and staying away from neons can direct attention elsewhere (unless you really want it brought to the cloud).
Candlesticks
This is typically the primary content on your chart. A lot of the color matching above in part two will help with some ideas. There really isn’t anything bad here for an option. The only things I may avoid is reds with black: this creates a weird pop up for your eyes and creates strain really fast.
The only other thing I’d consider is borders and wicks for the candles. You can make the candlesticks appear thicker on TradingView by giving them the same border as the candles themselves, to help bring attention to them. You can also make the borders the same color as the background so the candles appear sleek and thin.
For wicks, the only think I’ve seen look bad is giving too much color to them in comparison to the candles. Wicks are typically complimentary to the candles so you likely don’t want to give them more attention than the candles themselves.
I made some examples as well:
- Here is your typical red and green candlesticks with grid lines but without labels and a shaded RSI volume to keep attention toward the candles.
- These are white candles for upward price movements and black for downward. It was logical to include white borders for readability. The white candles can have white borders to stand out, but can be removed since the white candles stand out anyway.
- Here’s the same bug with a grey background. Notice it’s easier on the eyes but the black candles stand out funny with the white borders.
- Here’s the same as above but without those borders.
You can have thousands of combinations. Experimenting with what your preference is and how it reads can really help you find a good selection.
Built in Readability
Many cases, your color and design choices can reflect multiple ways to express information. For example, in the default green and red candlesticks, we can generally assume that red was a downward movement — but in some sense we can just remove color altogether and have all candlesticks be black with a white background. In other words, direction also induces readability and therefore color doesn’t dictate design.
This is also true with support and resistance lines. You don’t need color in support lines — they can be understood by being underneath current price action.
Note that this can’t typically be done well with shifting indicators like EMAs. They can shift enough so they get intermixed and can’t be distinguished on lower time frames. It’s good to have color in any line graph indicator that has more than one (expect maybe Guppy).
Unnecessary Design
If you want to clean up your charts a bit, the best consideration is to remove things that can either be self explained or combined with other design patterns. I mentioned earlier about S&R lines and candlesticks can be color coded or assumed direction, but bbands and other indicators can as well.
Examples
There have been good examples of charting design on Crypto Twitter and in this section, I wanted to highlight some that really look nice, contribute to readability, and provide great content.
- Trading Room: A very classical look that pairs will with the content they provide. A good pattern of a darker background to give attention to the traditional green and red candles, with lots of information to give. This matches well with their perceived theme — to give great and highly valuable content. Sometimes traditional colors help to let the reader forget about themes and into the subject matter. Trading Room can be found on Twitter @tradingroomapp
- Hsaka: the great content that Hsaka provides is complimented well in my opinion with blues and whites (two good colors that help support the calmer color/striking color design paradigm). The darker background is subtle and not overwhelming, which helps bring more content to the surface. Hsaka can be found on Twitter @HsakaTrades
- Crypto Trooper: this is a great example of the black and white theme of bringing out price action on a white background. Trooper does an excellent job of keeping it simple and related to his account theme. This helps focus on the great content that Trooper provides. Trooper can be found on Twitter @CryptoTrooper_
- Altcoin Psycho: an amazing follow with superb content, yet also complimented with the sepia background mentioned and a theme of a colorful flat look. Really easy on the eyes and it helps bring out the content more clearly. Psycho can be found on Twitter @AltcoinPsycho
- Crypto Princess: a good example of using alternative warm colors such as purples and indigos which match well from being close to the color spectrum, in addition to pinks. Keeps the content simple and understandable. She can be found on Twitter @CryptoPrincessa
- Treebeard: Black and whites but also complimented with horizontal colors and bold fonts. This is a great example of how candlesticks are important, but the color shows the highlighted importance within the candles. Treebeard can be found on Twitter @TreebeardTrades
You Can’t Please Everyone
If your trying to customize your charts for others, you’re not going to please everyone (and I don’t suggest changing themes just for them). Ultimately, design is an art form that’s mostly subjective, so it boils down to what you like as a theme. Different colors and shades work well for you to read, while others not so much.
Just keep experimenting.
The best thing you can really do is focus on the content. That’s what will help you become a better trader. Just make sure that colors and design are there to make it easy to trade and not complicate things or spend too many hours messing with. The great thing of it all is that we have the option to customize or just leave it the same.
Feel free to contact me on Twitter @hodltalk
