Her web, print, and
colorblind-friendly sets of colors, known as the Brewer palettes, have been used by numerous projects.[1][2] She is the creator of the online color palette tool
ColorBrewer.[3]
She graduated from
McMaster University (Ontario, Canada) in 1979 and the
University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada) in 1983.[5] She did her master's degree in geography with emphasis in cartography at
Michigan State University, 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, she obtained her doctorate from Michigan State University in 1991. Her dissertation was Prediction of Surround-Induced Changes in Map Color Appearance.[6]
Academic career
She was visiting lecturer at the
University of California at Santa Barbara, 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. She joined the
Pennsylvania State University, Department of Geography in 1994 and has been professor since 2007 and was head of the department from 2014 to 2021.
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.[6]
ColorBrewer is an online tool developed in 2002 for selecting
thematic map color schemes based on Brewer's palettes.[7] The ColorBrewer palette found uses outside maps, such as climatologist
Ed Hawkins' choice in 2018 of ColorBrewer reds and blues for
warming stripes graphics portraying
global warming.[8]