Thread: Design considerations

Excel offers numerous ways of customising charts - adding gridlines, choosing colours, changing the width of bars and printing labels at angles to make them easier to read are all useful tricks. But it also offers a host oftweaks that can tempt the unwary into producing graphs that are incomprehensible.



The 3 D pie chart is one to avoid. It may look cool, but it's almost impossible to make out the sizes of the slices. In fact, any 3D chart is harder for viewers to interpret than a flat one, even with grid lines. Avoid graduated fills and backgrounds and never be tempted to use bitrnap images to make each data series stand out. Use primary colours instead. If a chart is likely to be p.hotocopied or faxed, use patterns instead of colours.

Producing great-looking and highly effective charts in Excel is easy, so don't spoil them by overdoing the special effects. An overly fussy chart might persuade somebody that you're a whizz with computers, but it's unlikely to make a coherent point about the information you are trying to show them.