Michael Anderson, a web designer has posted this delicious looking visual resume [full image]
While the resume looks stunning at a glance, a closer inspection reveals that you cant really make any valuable conclusions about Michael’s past experience and qualifications. Of course if the purpose of this resume is to show that he is a fabulous designer, then the resume definitely achieved that. It has got way better presentation that lots of professional resumes out there.
It uses some of the more flamboyant and often avoided chart types like area chart, 3d area chart and a 3d donut area chart (oh dear God !)
Here are few things that I think are wrong with this data visualization:
- In-consistent color: The colors don’t convey any particular message. Especially, given the fact that he repeated the colors. Same color means coffee, layout design and sign-shop work experience. One of the primary rules of data visualization in dashboards is to use color for repetition. For eg. using one color for each product.
- Poor choice of charts: While 3d charts look great, they are not the best ones to describe real information. Instead of 3d area charts and 3d donut area charts, a better choice would have been to use bar charts. They are simple, elegant and convey rich information very easily. Hey, you can make eye candy using bars too.
- Irrelevant Data: If I am someone planning to hire Michael, I would definitely be more interested in what great kickass stuff he has done (and I am sure he has done stuff like that, looking at this) than how much coffee he takes each day (and still I cant figure out how many cups he drinks, thanks to weird chart selection)
Not showing the numbers:As Anderson said in his post “[T]his is just concept art, as there are almost no real metrics represented except for time.” and I guess, this comment doesn’t apply.We all know that resumes work well, when they talk numbers (made 500 XHTML compatible pages in 50 hours, 25 magazine cover designs, 500k downloads for my icon library etc.), unfortunately Michael missed on that totally. One can assume any number of things about his work in “the sign shop” or “Comor inc.”
What are your thoughts on this data visualization? Awesome or awful ?
Thanks to Manoj for sharing the link via e-mail
9 Responses to “Show forecast values in a different color with this simple trick [charting]”
While this works in a pinch, it clearly "lightens" the colors of the entire chart. Depending on where you use this, it will be blatantly obvious that you don't know what you are doing and present a poor looking graph.
Why not separate the data into different segments when charting and have as many colors as you have data points? You might have to create a new legend and/or repeat the chart in "invisible ink", but it would be cleaner and more consistent when new or updated data becomes available.
While I think I agree that doing it "properly" via a second series is preferable, I don't necessarily agree that making the entirety of the "future" (data, gridlines, and even the axis) semi-transparent is "poor looking". I think it could be seen as adding more emphasis to the "future-ness" of the forecast data.
In short, it's another tool for the toolbox, even if it's never needed.
Simply and clever 🙂
Quick & effective, cool. thanks.
I always use the dummy series.
Nice little trick, thanks very much!
Two sets of data better. Control is much better.
You can use the same chart next month to see what is actual and what is forecast.
To use this trick, I think grid lines has to be removed, that will make the graphic much more sharp.
to be honest, i dont understand why there is needed to do this way... in this case horizontal lines will be pale as well. then why a just can't change the color of the line partly???
Great tutorial. Thanks for the tutorial!