I have published an e-book, '14 Tips to Present Awesome Charts' . It is based on the recently concluded series on the blog where I shared 14 practical tips with you on how to make effective and smarter looking charts. Based on real life charts taken from some of the well known companies in India and abroad this e-book takes you through each tip in a simple and easy manner. It is a concise version of the 14 blog posts (which were pretty elaborate). Download the e-book by clicking here . If you have any problems downloading it, email me and I will mail you the file. My email id: vivek [at] jazzfactory [dot] in. 14 Tips To Present Awesome Charts View more documents from Vivek Singh . Feel free to share it with your friends and colleagues. Read it, share it and tell me how did you like it. I would appreciate your comments and feedback.

14 Tips to Present Awesome Charts is a special series which shares 14 practical tips on how to present your charts better. Why study the 14 Tips? You can crunch data well and make a chart. At the time of presenting you still falter because you have overlooked the bigger picture (why are you presenting the chart? what is your key message?). Your chart looks complicated and busy because you have allocated no time to chart design. To understand what goes behind making a great chart, read these tips. Every tip contains multiple examples from real life. Here are the links to the 14 posts: 1. Why do you need a chart? You should not work with the principle that 'where there is raw data there is a chart'. This post helps you find out when you need a chart and when you don't. 2. How to choose the right chart type? Most of the time you have multiple chart types to choose from. Line or bar, bar or pie. This post deep dives on how to choose a right chart type with an easy to use fra...

This is the final post in the series, 14 Tips to Present Awesome Charts . In the last two weeks you have learned 13 tips on how to make your charts awesome. How to make charts that will help you achieve your overall presentation objectives. Should I expect that you will remember all the 13 tips and apply them every time you make a chart? In my dreams. How about a mnemonic ? Behold the 13 letters in order of their posts; N, T, T, K, D, L, L, A, S, C, A, H, A. I am out of here! So, what do you do with the 13 Tips? After reading the 13 tips, you now need to understand the bigger picture; the process of making a good chart. You also need to know which ones are crucial and which ones can be taken lightly. The Bigger Picture Get out of the 13 tips and take a few steps back. Even better, take an airplane and rise above the crowd. What do you see? This is the bigger picture. The process which you follow while making a good chart. This is a 4 step process: Step 1. What is your key message? St...

This is the 13th post in the series, 14 Tips to Present Awesome Charts . What is chart aesthetics? Aesthetics mainly deals with beauty and taste. In our context, chart aesthetics would mean the overall look and feel of a chart. For an audience to understand and read a chart, they need to like it first. It does not mean that a chart has to be a piece of art. It simply means the chart has to 'fit' in the slide and should not look out of place. It has to be such that your audience can easily read and remember the chart. Why bother about chart aesthetics? After all you are a serious presenter. It is a presentation in your college or office. And here I am teaching you aesthetics. So why should you bother? Let me show you four formal charts. Assume that you made these four charts. Would you be happy with this? Chart #1: Do you think your audience would like to read this chart? Chart #2: Do you think your audience will be able to easily read the chart (and understand)? C...

This is the 12th post in the series, 14 Tips to Present Awesome Charts . What does it mean to highlight? To highlight (verb) means to make something more prominent . It is different from the noun highlight which means the most important part . We are concerned with the verb form here. What do you highlight? You highlight a data point or a data series or a relation between two data points (or series). Example, highlighting one bar is a data point but highlighting a line graphs made out of 10 data points is a data series. When do you highlight something important? By definition, you highlight something that you want to make prominent. It is not already conspicuous (obvious to the eye). Some instances when you highlight are: i. You highlight to point out the change in values of a variable (a growth in sales over time). By looking at the graph, the growth is obvious but the percentage is not. ii. You highlight to give a reason for change in values of a variable (...

This is the 11th post in the series, 14 Tips to Present Awesome Chart s. We are now almost at the end of this 14 part series. In the last post I talked about an often neglected part of presenting charts; colors. Today, we will discuss about another area which presenters have underutilized; Chart Animations.  We will discuss the following: 1. What do we mean by chart animation? 2. When to use animation and why? 3. How to animate a chart? 4. How not to misuse animation? 1. What do we mean by chart animation? When we talk of chart animation, we do not mean that the entire chart appears with an effect or fades in, etc. We are talking of animating the line graphs or bar graphs of the chart. Animation would make each data point or series of data points come one after the another, with a clear purpose. The purpose is covered in point 2.   2. When to use animation and why? In my Feb 24th post this year, I had talked about when to use animation. Th...

This is the 10th post in the series, 14 Tips to Present Awesome Charts .   "Life is polychromatic. Do not live it in monochrome." Your chart is a lot like your life. So, stop being a bore and make your charts interesting by coloring them well. What is the role of color in a Chart? While I am talking about chart colors, I can see many eyebrows raising. "We make formal presentations and all this coloring has no place in our company. Let's talk data." This post is not about how to make your chart colorful and get noticed. This post is about how to balance the colors on a slide so that chart colors become invisible. Yes, the way I look at colors is: "Color is that ingredient of your dish (chart) which does not have a taste of its own. It enhances the taste of the dish without getting noticed. If the color of your chart is getting noticed, you have failed." The role of color is thus two fold: 1. It has to make the job of audience easy to read the ...

This is the 9th post in the series, 14 Tips to Present Awesome Charts . Your chart is made from raw data. But this raw data is not a fiction of your imagination. It has a source. A source from where you culled out the data for analysis and representation. We will today discuss about this most ignored element of a chart; source of data. We will cover the following questions: 1. Why you need to worry about the source? 2. When should you mention the source and when you need not? 3. How and where do you mention the source of data in your chart? 1. Why you need to worry about the source? Imaging this situation: You are in-charge of new product launches in your company. You have studied the fairness soap market for men in India and in your presentation to the CEO you are recommending to launch a new soap brand. In the process of research you would have come across lots of data. When you present it, your CEO might ask; "Where did you get this data from?" All that he is asking for i...

This is the 8th post in the series, 14 Tips to Present Awesome Charts . Today we will talk about chart axis. To be specific, we will discuss the following: 1. What is an axis? 2. What should you know about an axis? 3. What more can you do with an axis? 4. When and how should you use secondary axis? 1. What is an axis? An axis in a chart or graph is the line along which we measure our variables. It is nothing but a scale (or a ruler). Go back to your class 6-7 where you read about Y-axis and X-axis. In the following chart, we are measuring your height up the Y-axis and your age along the X-axis. Example 1 Your height over time The first data point; at age 12 your height is just under 140cms, at age 13 it is just above 140. The axis tells you that age and height are being measured. Age is being measured along x-axis (horizontal axis) in years. Height is being measured up the y-axis (vertical axis) in cm. The axis also lets you read the measuremen ts. If you need more accuracy, you nee...