Beautifying Excel

  • Thread starter Thread starter Astley Le Jasper
  • Start date Start date
A

Astley Le Jasper

I have created an application which outputs it's information into
Excel so the client can manipulate the information easily. However,
they've moved the goalposts a bit and now want it to 'look cool'.

I usually work with websites so that usually wouldn't be a problem.
However, could anyone point me in the direction of any resources on
making Excel ... erm ... sexy! I appreciate that I can probably change
the fonts and colours, maybe include graphs and images here and there,
but I wondered if there were any galleries anywhere of good examples.
Specifically he wants an interface to filter the information and
things.

To be honest, I like my spreadsheets simple and elegant. Most of the
attempts I've seen at jazzing up excel end in the creation of some
real munters.

Thanks
 
Astley Le Jasper said:
To be honest, I like my spreadsheets simple and elegant. Most of the
attempts I've seen at jazzing up excel end in the creation of some
real munters.
Click to expand...

Exactly! Sexing it up usually means obscuring the information, so keep it
simple.
 
Astley,

I don't necessarily agree with Bob. Visualization is a powerful tool and
can help your client to adopt a process more easily if its people find the
technology easier to use and understand. I suggest you look at Business
Objects Crystal Xcelsius. Look at the samples that they show and understand
that for the most part, an Excel spreadsheet is driving the dashboard. You
can find Crystal Xcelsius at the following URL:
http://www.businessobjects.com/product/catalog/xcelsius/.

John
Accelare
 
I didn't say don't do visualization, I said keep it simple.

Unfortunately, I think Crystal Excelsius is prime example of what is so
prevalently bad in the field of visualization, too many widgets, ill-thought
out dashboards, and a predominance of style over content. To quote Stephen
Few ... these solutions ( Crystal Excelsius competition) illustrate the
theme that has dominated most BI data visualization ...: anaemically
presented data, tainted with distracting visual nonsense.' Couldn't have
said it better myself.

Unfortunately, too many people, and you seem to be amongst them, confuse the
technology with the objective. The technology should serve the objective,
not be the raison d'être in itself.
 
I didn't say don't do visualization, I said keep it simple.

Unfortunately, I think Crystal Excelsius is prime example of what is so
prevalently bad in the field of visualization, too many widgets, ill-thought
out dashboards, and a predominance of style over content. To quote Stephen
Few ... these solutions ( Crystal Excelsius competition) illustrate the
theme that has dominated most BI data visualization ...: anaemically
presented data, tainted with distracting visual nonsense.' Couldn't have
said it better myself.

Unfortunately, too many people, and you seem to be amongst them, confuse the
technology with the objective. The technology should serve the objective,
not be the raison d' tre in itself.

--
__________________________________
HTH

Bob
Click to expand...

Hi,

Thanks for the comments. I'd agree that when used appropriately
visualisation tools can be incredibly powerful. But often people want
visuals without actually knowing why. However, I've managed to find
that there are a number of style examples with Excel 2007 that have
given me some ideas. I can probably brand the spreadsheet and use some
suitable styles to give them something a little extra without actually
getting in the way of the information. If they then decide after
actually using the data that they need further analysis, then perhaps
it would be appropriate to look again at visualisation tools.

I like the Business Objects examples by the way.

Thanks

ALJ
 
Thanks for the comments. I'd agree that when used appropriately
visualisation tools can be incredibly powerful. But often people want
visuals without actually knowing why.[/QUOTE]

Yes, visualisation can be powerful ... but adding it to 'look cool' is the
worst possible reason to do so and almost invariably, decreases the power.
:)
There are some excellent books on visualising data out there - suggest this
one as a starting point :
The visual display of quantitative information / Tufte, Edward R (2001)

Other books by this author are also excellent.

As an aside and to encourage controversy, pie charts are an abomination and
should never be used - too much 'non data ink'. :) :)


(snip)
 
Bruce Sinclair said:
Yes, visualisation can be powerful ... but adding it to 'look cool' is the
worst possible reason to do so and almost invariably, decreases the power.
:)
There are some excellent books on visualising data out there - suggest
this
one as a starting point :
The visual display of quantitative information / Tufte, Edward R (2001)
Click to expand...


Agree on all points.

Other books by this author are also excellent.

As an aside and to encourage controversy, pie charts are an abomination
and
should never be used - too much 'non data ink'. :) :)
Click to expand...


Double agree. And 3D charts are totally misleading. And have you seen those
cone charts in Excel 2007, what are they all about?
 
Agree on all points.
Double agree. And 3D charts are totally misleading. And have you seen those
cone charts in Excel 2007, what are they all about?
Click to expand...

There's a wonderful example of a very "pretty" chart in the tufte book
mentioned above (I think ?). It's a map of Israel, with some data
(population or some kind of demographic I think) shown as pie charts with
quite a lot of segments. The worst part is, some of those pie chart segments
then have other pie charts attached to them ! There is no way anyone can get
anything useful out of it. But it looks gorgeous. :) :)

I have explored very few of the chart types in XL, as the only one that
works for 'real data' ( :) ) is the XY scatter. That is (or was) the only
one that allowed different spacings between Xs ... and worse ... all the
other types made the X spacings the same and never said anything about it !!
I noticed when a straight line plotted as a curve in a bar chart ... and it
was only after considerable confusion for a while that the reason became
clear. That was a "high bugger index" day ... and a classic reason why
visual is not always a good idea. Leson learned. :)
 
Back
Top