Accounting Mechanics

Ugliness as Standard

I’m going to get straight to the point here: in my opinion, standard Excel charts are plain ugly. Why this should be, when Microsoft puts astounding effort into other design elements, is beyond me. Take for instance the care devoted to fonts used for different purposes. I’m astonished to think that they employ a whole team of people simply to make sure that letters and numbers look good on the screen and on paper.

But look at this:

Your reaction to the above chart might be one of these:

1. You agree with me, the above is unnecessarily ugly
2. You think the above is actually pretty fair
3. You don’t care about whether it looks good or not, “it’s only a chart, for goodness’ sake!”
4. I wish I had that much revenue / I’m pleased my revenue is not that low / How did you get hold of my revenue numbers?*

*- not really the point of this post

Going on the available data (the majority of charts that I see, even in prefessional reports, use exactly the formatting shown above) I guess many people would react with point 2 or 3 above.

The Importance of Being Fairest

Is it important whether the charts you produce look agreeable or ugly? My answer is definitley yes:

• pleasing appearance is likely to coincide with good design, which we should be concerned about
• why not sieze the opportunity to enhance your reputation as a producer of quality work

Don’t spend too much time on aesthetics; the Excel chart system doesn’t offer enough flexibility to reward more than a few minutes of beautification. However, please do consider the design aspects of the charts you produce.

Good Design

The Visual Display of Quantitive Information, an often recommended book, inspires a healthy concern for design of charts. After reading it, I have always aimed for the following features (or lack of features!) in my Excel charts:

• Remember the primary purpose of a chart is communication, not art. Don’t use 3D, embedded pictures, zany colour schemes, etc.
• Remove all unnecessary ink - e.g. the solid black lines that surround everything in Excel’s default formats
• Tone down the elements that have supporting roles (e.g. gridlines) by colouring them gray or using dotted lines
• Colours are clearer than shading patterns or shaped markers at distinguishing data series - unless you need to print in black and white
• Choose more interesting colours than the default, but keep tones in proportion
• Resize all labels and titles to allow the data itself to take centre-stage
• Resize the plot area so that it properly fills the chart area

Here is the result of about 3 minutes work on the chart above:

What do you think - worth the time invested?