This weekend, let us talk … umm… charts. I want to know if you absolutely make sure your charts look good everytime you sent them out to someone. I do this most of the time.
My usual chart sex up routine is,
- Remove the background
- Add labels and remove grid lines and legend
- Highlight necessary data and set some dull color to the rest (if needed)
- Change fonts, most often change them to Verdana
- Format axis and axis labels
Of course, I don’t do this every time. Instead I use some user defined charts and save tons of time.
How do you sex up your charts? or you say “not tonight honey” to them.
Learn 2 more charting principles in naughty but totally fun way: Is your chart’s underwear showing? | Are you making blow charts?
3 Responses to “CP049: Don’t do data dumps!!!”
Your title got me nervous because I'm all about data dumps, but not for attaching graphics to data dumps. My reason for using data dumps is when someone is trying to do analysis and their starting point is a report that's formatted in a way for a human to read. I instruct them to stop with the report and go get a data dump: just rows and columns and rows and columns.
Agreed, nearly all of my reports start with 100+ lines of simple table data.
That way you can build your functionality around pulling information from that tabled information.
Yes yes!