SubscribeIs your (chart’s) underwear showing?
When I read Is your website’s underwear showing?, I couldn’t control the urge to write this one.
So the big screaming friday question everyone…
Is your chart’s underwear showing?
What is my chart’s underwear? you may ask.
My dear reader, it is the background color (that grayish shade excel adds by default). Also commonly known as one of the chart junk (no pun intended).
It is surprising how many people leave the default background color on, and yet spend countless hours working the rest.
What difference does it make?
It makes a hell of a lot of difference. Just set the background color to white and tell me if your eyes haven’t felt better.
Remember, only superman can get away showing his underwear. But, again he doesn’t have to work on spreadsheets and powerpoint like you and me. So, lets just hide that ugly background color. Ok?
flickr superman image credit to videoplacebo
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- Pingback by Is your (chart’s) underwear showing? | floralshoes.com on November 14, 2008 @ 12:05 pm
- Pingback by Are you making Blow charts? [charting tips] | Pointy Haired Dilbert - Chandoo.org on December 2, 2008 @ 5:27 pm
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At Pointy Haired Dilbert, I have one goal, "to make you awesome in excel and charting". PHD is started in 2007 and today has 300+ articles and tutorials on using excel, making better charts. 
Lol. It almost always does .. main bhi Superman
.. nice one Chandoo .. simple yet effective.
Oh come on, if any pun was intended, that one was!
Very funny title, but I assumed you were referring to the tendency of some people to paste charts into other Office programs (read: Powerpoint), exposing potentially sensitive data to end users.
–JP
@Kida… thank you… btw,.. you may want to be a normal man…
@Jon… I couldnt resist ….
@JP… hmm… even though that is another common problem it rarely annoys people during the presentations. It is an issue only when someone actually opens that attached excel file. On the other hand having the background color on not only stands out like a sore thumb, it makes it all the more difficult to read the chart (I am talking about the grayish default shade, you can leave background colors on if you have carefully adjusted it)
Nice title, chartypants. I’m reminded of a certain recent post where someone had visible rantly line showing