Introducing {colourmebad} - find pronounceable colours close to reference colours

2021-07-30

colourmebad

colourmebad provides some tools for finding pronounceable approximations to hex colours.

These tools will be handy if you ever have to memorise a set of hex colours, or would like to impress people with your recall of a good colour palette as a party trick. In summary - no one needs these tools.

This package was inspired by mdsumner’s hexwords package.

What’s in the box

  • find_best_colour_match() For each of the reference colours supplied, this function will find the best match amongst a list of candidate colours. Where ‘best match’ is defined as the shortest euclidean distance in Lab colourspace.
  • colours_to_words() and words_to_colours() to use some digit/letter substitutions and convert a 6-letter word into a hex colour and vice versa
  • show_palette() to display a single set of colours
  • compare_palettes() to show 2 palettes side-by-side
  • Included colour lists
    • colour_words hex colours which are directly readable as dictionary words
    • colour_words_with_substitutions hex colours which can be converted to dictionary words if certain digit/letter substitutions are performed e.g. replay all letter-o with number-0 etc.
    • nonsense_words hex colours which could almost be read as a pronounceable word but with a very high probability of being nonsense/gibberish. e.g. #elesta

Installation

You can install from GitHub with:

# install.package('remotes')
remotes::install_github('coolbutuseless/colourmebad')

Hex colours which are dictionary words

library(colourmebad)

colour_words
#>  [1] "#accede" "#afaced" "#bacaba" "#baccae" "#baffed" "#beaded" "#bedaff"
#>  [8] "#bedded" "#bedead" "#bedeaf" "#beebee" "#beefed" "#cabbed" "#cadded"
#> [15] "#dabbed" "#daffed" "#decade" "#decede" "#deeded" "#deface" "#defade"
#> [22] "#efface" "#facade" "#feeded"
colourmebad::colours_to_words(colour_words)
#>  [1] "accede" "afaced" "bacaba" "baccae" "baffed" "beaded" "bedaff" "bedded"
#>  [9] "bedead" "bedeaf" "beebee" "beefed" "cabbed" "cadded" "dabbed" "daffed"
#> [17] "decade" "decede" "deeded" "deface" "defade" "efface" "facade" "feeded"
colourmebad::show_palette(colour_words)

Hex colours which are dictionary words if you allow for some digit-letter subsitutions

In the great tradition of “hacker speak” and customised number plates for cars, digits can be used in place of letters if they look similar enough.

The default substitutions this package employs:

  • 0 = o
  • 1 = l (lower case L)
  • 2 = z
  • 5 = s
  • 7 = t
  • 9 = g
cols <- sample(colour_words_with_substitutions, 25)
cols
#>  [1] "#7ea51e" "#9e0da1" "#ba1a7a" "#5099ed" "#de17a5" "#cac7a1" "#b017e1"
#>  [8] "#fe0da1" "#ca77ed" "#add1e5" "#9051e7" "#5ca775" "#d0d1e7" "#5ca1e5"
#> [15] "#c0991e" "#5701e5" "#0b1a7a" "#5add1e" "#501ace" "#ca57e5" "#2abe7a"
#> [22] "#e570c5" "#bab005" "#effe7e" "#e771ed"
colourmebad::colours_to_words(cols)
#>  [1] "teasle" "geodal" "balata" "sogged" "deltas" "cactal" "boltel" "feodal"
#>  [9] "catted" "addles" "goslet" "scatts" "dodlet" "scales" "coggle" "stoles"
#> [17] "oblata" "saddle" "solace" "castes" "zabeta" "estocs" "baboos" "effete"
#> [25] "ettled"
colourmebad::show_palette(cols)

Hex colours which are probably nonsense words but may be pronounceable

cols <- sample(nonsense_words, 25)
cols
#>  [1] "#9e1ae7" "#fa15e5" "#5e7a75" "#91e052" "#b1009b" "#ce7e77" "#09090a"
#>  [8] "#a91e17" "#ede91a" "#75a570" "#77e75e" "#17e7ca" "#0021a7" "#d00d1e"
#> [15] "#1a091a" "#1ee755" "#cac1a7" "#57a7ed" "#05707a" "#07ae15" "#027ee2"
#> [22] "#05c1a5" "#7e0d01" "#51eac1" "#7ee570"
colourmebad::colours_to_words(cols)
#>  [1] "gelaet" "falses" "setats" "gleosz" "bloogb" "cetett" "ogogoa" "aglelt"
#>  [9] "edegla" "tsasto" "ttetse" "ltetca" "oozlat" "doodle" "laogla" "leetss"
#> [17] "caclat" "stated" "ostota" "otaels" "ozteez" "osclas" "teodol" "sleacl"
#> [25] "teesto"
colourmebad::show_palette(cols)

Creating a pronounceable palette similar to a reference palette

ref <- RColorBrewer::brewer.pal(8, 'Dark2')

colourmebad::show_palette(ref, labels = ref, title = "Reference Palette")

pronounceable <- colourmebad::find_best_colour_match(ref, colour_words_with_substitutions)
colourmebad::compare_palettes(ref, pronounceable, "ColorBrewer Dark2", "Words with digit/letter substitutions")

Creating a pronounceable nonsense palette similar to a reference palette

pronounceable <- colourmebad::find_best_colour_match(ref, nonsense_words)
colourmebad::compare_palettes(ref, pronounceable, "ColorBrewer Dark2", "Nonsense words")

Creating a pronounceable Spanish palette similar to a reference palette

# http://ftp.icm.edu.pl/packages/wordlists/spanish/
spanish_words_with_substitutions <- system('grep -i -E "^[abcdeflsotgz]{6}$" ./working/spanish.txt', intern = TRUE)
cols <- colourmebad::words_to_colours(spanish_words_with_substitutions)
pronounceable_spanish <- colourmebad::find_best_colour_match(ref, cols)
colourmebad::compare_palettes(ref, pronounceable_spanish, "ColorBrewer Dark2", "Spanish words")