Beautifying Charts
The first thing I recommend is doing some reading on how to present data. The most obvious source is Edward Tufte (Google will find him fast), who has written some really good stuff on this.
What I have learned is that you need to focus on the message in your chart, and make it stand out. Usually, the message is in the data, rather than the title, labels, and lines, so this will lead you to fade everything except the data into the background. However, accentuating the data doesn't mean cluttering it up with "chartjunk" (as Tufte puts it).
While this approach leads you toward simplicity and elegance, Tufte warns against using charts where tables would do, eg for very simple data. Charts draw the reader's eye, and they need to earn that attention.
At the other extreme, effective charts can be very data rich, as this example shows.
Let's get started..
Standard Excel charts use strong colours and strong lines. This is probably so they show up clearly in all sorts of situations.
While this approach is understandable, the problem is that it breaks all sorts of guidelines for data visualisation (see section on "the basics of colours"). The best way to see this is to see the effect of making some changes. Please note that there are many ways to do this, and these changes are not necessarily the best.
The chart should now look like this…let's change those awful colours next…
The chart should now look something like this…those colours are probably too light, but there's a nice trick we can use to give them some body.
Let's keep it fairly simple, so we'll click the One color button below
The chart should now look something like this…the colours have more body
Note: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You may prefer to use different colours to start with and not go to all this trouble with special effects.
There is no suggestion that you do all this for every chart. But the more you know, the more choices you will have when you build your next chart.
So what do you think?