In my Twitter feed I saw a number of well respected data visualization experts liking a recent article by RJ Andrews for the Data Visualization Society. In it he talks about the issue of starting the axis of a graph at a value other than zero. This is a common topic in the dataviz world…
Category: Data & Graphs
Matching Excel charts to a PowerPoint color scheme; Issue #434 March 5 2019
If you create a graph in Excel, how do you get the colors to match the organization’s PowerPoint template? The two most common approaches are: 1) spend time typing in the RGB values for the correct colors into Excel for every graph, or 2) ignore the desire to make the colors match because of the…
Showing future differences; Issue #433 February 19 2019
When we want to show the impact of a proposed change, one of the ways we can do it is to show a line graph of the current state and the proposed state with a shaded area between the two to emphasize the difference. This is much better than the default table of values that…
Comparing only one value to a standard; Issue #432 February 5 2019
When you want to compare values to a standard, such as comparing output in various production plants to the goal, a dashed line on a column graph is a good visual to use. The dashed line runs across the graph and it is easy to see if each column is above or below the goal.…
Bar charts with long category labels; Issue #428 November 27 2018
How do we create graphs with category labels that contain a lot of text? If you are comparing values to each other, a column graph can get tricky since Excel and PowerPoint will turn the text at an angle and cut off labels that are really long. This makes it very hard for the audience…
FinancialViz Makeover: Comparing to an average with long labels; Issue #426 October 30 2018
The latest FinancialViz makeover video I posted illustrates how to create an effective visual when dealing with two situations: first, values are compared to an industry average, and second, the company names are long. The original visual was published in the June 2018 issue of the Globe and Mail Report on Business magazine. This is the…
Change indicator characters; Issue #425 October 16 2018
The difference between two numbers is a common element of many presentations. It could be the difference between actual and budget, this year and last year, industry average and our performance, or any two numbers that measure an important metric. Visually showing whether that difference is positive, negative, or neutral in a table is what…
Accurate Design Ideas-like Timeline; Issue #424 October 2 2018
In a previous newsletter I showed an example of how PowerPoint’s Design Ideas feature (last week Microsoft changed the name from Designer to Design Ideas) can create a visual from a bullet list of dates for events. Here is the example it created. I like the idea of the events being placed on a timeline…
FinancialViz Makeover Change in sectors over time; Issue #423 September 18 2018
The latest FinancialViz makeover I posted illustrates a better way to show change in values over time. The original visual was published in the July 2018 issue of the Globe and Mail ROB magazine. Here is the original visual. I selected this visual because it illustrates two issues that lead to audiences misinterpreting the meaning…
SWD Challenge September 2018
I think makeovers of slides or visuals is a great way to see what is possible in our own presentations. If we have never seen a visual used in a certain way before, we would never think of applying it to what we present. The makeovers that I use in my custom workshops are always…