The worldwide web is a wonderful place. I am constantly amazed by the simple yet very effective stuff we can learn by just reading. Today I want to share with you two very great pieces of advice:
- Seth Godin’s 4 Simple Principles for making effective graphs:
Seth Godin is probably one of the most remarkable, successful storytellers out there. And when he tells you how to make effective graphs, you can pretty much trust him. He says (1) Don’t let popular spreadsheets be in charge of the way you look, (2) Tell a story (3) Follow some simple rules (4) Break some other rules. We at PHD totally agree and spread these very principles everyday. He also says,Don’t use 3-D charts unless you have a license. You can animate, but only if you have a note from your doctor.
Priceless Advice… 🙂
- Juice Analytics’ Think Like a Designer when you are making dashboards
Juice is one of my favorite blogs. In this very concise yet important article they list down 7 dashboard design principles: (1) Unity/Harmony (2) Proximity / Hierarchy (3) Clear Space (4) Balance (5) Contrast (6) Proportion (7) Simplicity
Do you notice something interesting? Both links resonate same ideas, same principles and hold same values that can make you a great presenter / storyteller / individual.
Additional material for reading: 14 basic skills for chart makers, Make dashboards using excel
Have a good weekend everyone 🙂
8 Responses to “Introducing PHD Sparkline Maker – Dead Simple way to Create Excel Sparklines”
This looks like it could be very useful for a project I'm putting together right now, thank you so much. Quick & silly question, how do I copy & paste the sparkline as a picture?
Question answered. For anyone else:
Select chart>Hold Shift key & select Edit/Copy Picture>Paste
[...] more information about PHD Sparkline Maker, please read this article and to learn more about Sparklines, read this article from Microsoft Excel 2010 blog. Also there [...]
Am I right in thinking that the y-axis is set automatically by excel?
That makes it possible to get the column chart not to start at zero.
Andy - yes, it is currently set to 'auto', which defaults to a zero base for positive values, but you can change that by left-clicking the chart, then choosing (in Excel 2007):
"Chart Tools/Layout/Axes/Primary Vertical Axis/More Primary Vertical Axis Options"
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: When manually editing a chart's minimum/maximum axis values, PLEASE be sure there's a valid reason and that doing so won't skew the message shown by the data (e.g. by exaggerating differences). If in doubt, go back and read Tufte. (W.W.T.D.?)
[...] gridlines, axis, legend, titles, labels etc.) and resize it so that it fits nicely in a cell [example]. This is the easiest and cleanest way to get sparklines in earlier versions of excel. However this [...]
thanks for the work creating the template!!!!
looks good