There's nothing worse to read and analyse than poorly made charts. You know the ones I mean: axes with diagonal text, multi-coloured bar charts where you need to spend 20 minutes just working out which colour is which bar, and my personal favourite, pie charts, where the formatting makes you think one segment is larger than another when in fact they are the same size. To help, I thought I would put together some basic charts all preformatted, though you can of course change it as you wish! Enjoy. Feel free to read my full blog post on this here: http://alesandrab.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/make-your-charts-look-amazing/ Alesandra Blakeston.

1. Line Chart
Explanation of the data here
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Text 1 Text 2 Text 3 Text 4 Text 5 Text 6 Text 7 Text 8

2. Column Chart
Explanation of the data here
70
60 65 65
50
50 50
40 45 45
40 40
30
20
10
0
Text 1 Text 2 Text 3 Text 4 Text 5 Text 6 Text 7 Text 8

3. 3D Column Chart
Explanation of the data here
65
45 50
40 65
45 50
40

4. Bar Chart
Explanation of the data here
Description 1 45
Description 2 50
Description 3 40
Description 4 65
Description 5 45
Description 6 50
Description 7 40
Description 8 65
Description 9 45
Description 10 50
Description 11 40
Description 12 65

5. Bubble Chart
Explanation of the data here
5
Y-Values
4
3
2
1
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6

6. Star Chart
Explanation of the data here
6
Data A
5 Data B
4
3
2
1
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6

7. Histogram
Explanation of the data here
40
34
30
29 29
20 22 22
14 14
10
11 11
8 8
4 4
0 2 2
200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 600 650 700 750 800 850 900

8. Conditional Line Charts
= above target
= below target
56
54
52
50
48
46
44
42
40
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

9. Pareto Chart
Explanation of the data here
500 100%
400 80%
300 60%
200 220 40%
190
100 20%
60
0
30 20 0%
Data 1 Data 2 Data 3 Data 4 Data 5

10. Multiple Area and Line Charts
Explanation of the data here
18 Data 1 Data 2 Data 3
16 A
14 A A
12
10
8
6
4 B B
2 B
0
For example, regardless of the data set, A is always greater than B

11. Arrow graph
Explanation of the data here
1.20
1.00
1.00 0.95
0.80
0.80
0.70
0.60
0.50
0.40
0.20
0.00
data 1 data 2 data 3 data 4 data 5

12. Combination Stacked Bar Chart
Explanation of the data here
900
2012 Target
800 453
400 2012 Hours
700 2011 Target
600 2011 Hours
325 300
500
400 252
402 400 214
300 325
307
200 125 150
198 206
100 125 125
0
Data 1 Data 2 Data 3 Data 4

13. Waterfall graph
Explanation of the data here
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
100
2000 1500 500 -100 -400 -100 338 338
0
Old A B C D E F G New
-500

14. Broken column
Explanation of the data here
25 Label Name
20
10
0
A B C D E F

15. Box Plot / Whisker Plot
Explanation of the data here
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
A B C D E F G H I J

16. Box Plot / Whisker Plot v2
Explanation of the data here
100
87 86 87
80
71
60 64
58 56
45
40
31.5 33.5 30 27.5
20
12
0 -2 -5
-15 -18
-20
-40 -37
-60
Row 1 Row 2 Row 3 Row 4 Row 5 Row 6

17. Multiple Bubble Chart
Explanation of the data here
Data 1 Data 2 Data 3 Data 4 Data 5
Aug 11 Sep 11 Oct 11 Nov 11 Dec 11 Jan 12 Feb 12 Mar 12 Apr 12 May 12 Jun 12 Jul 12 Aug 12 Sep 12

18. Thermometer & Gauges
Explanation of the data here
100 100
80
80 80
Target 60 60
Last year
40 40
Actual
20 20
Increase
0 0 Mercury

19. Bullet table
Year to date report
YTD Report
Target Ranges Normalised
YTD 2012 2013 Poor OK YTD 2012 Target Poor OK Bullet Graph
Data 1 1100 1000 1200 600 900 18 17 20 10 15 ────────────────┼─
Data 2 2182 711 3200 500 2700 14 4 20 3 17 ───┼──────────
Data 3 172 171 400 250 350 9 9 20 13 18 ────────┼
Data 4 13 59 100 75 90 3 12 20 15 18 ─── │
Data 5 840 309 1800 1200 1500 9 3 20 13 17 ──┼──────
Data 6 2876 1950 10000 4000 6000 6 4 20 8 12 ───┼──
Data 7 8 0 30 20 25 5 0 20 13 17 ─────
Data 8 504 1418 2375 1800 2200 4 12 20 15 19 ──── │

20. Dot table
How to create a dot table using the REPT function
Data Dot Chart
Data 1 2 l
Data 2 4 l
Data 3 5 l
Data 4 2 l
Data 5 6 l
Data 6 12 l
Data 7 11 l
Data 8 4 l
Data 9 7 l
Data 10 10 l
Data 11 9 l
Data 12 7 l

21. Data driven
Graphs & Charts
Alesandra Blakeston