Ugly Real Economic Growth Chart from Singapore Statistics.

Singapore Statistics have the most amazing numbers on Singapore. Anything on our country’s GDP to how many handphones we have on average can be found. But the folks from SingStats seriously need to improve their charts.
Take a look here (http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/charts/econ.html#econA)

I could hardly make any sense out of these charts. They seems to be just thrown together with out any theme or purpose. After all the work of collecting the data, if you can’t present data in a useful manner, it’s simply a waste of efforts.

I took up the challenge to clean up this miserable chart using Excel, and try to show that beautiful charts can be useful to convery data in a clearer manner.

The improvements I made:
1. The distinct shape of our total economy is much clearer as an area chart.
2. The Manufacturing and Financial sectors are reduced to scatter chart with drop lines. The trends can still be discerned yet is less noisy compared to the original version.

A 10 year Balance Sheet Dashboard

Imagine you are the new CFO. You took over the position in the new firm and you want to look at the firm’s latest balance sheet.

You’ll probably want to see the firm’s 10 year balance sheet history.  It will be tough to make sense of things. What if you have a balance sheet dashboard instead? It contains the latest information complete with a 10 year history of each balance sheet line item! That’s truly a powerful tool in the hands of a competent accountant!

Klipfolio, a beautiful dashboard software. Free!

I have always been a fan of Klipfolio (http://www.klipfolio.com). This tiny software features beautifully made dashboards that run on your desktop. It’s useful and very clever. Download it, try it. It’s a low risk way to see how dashboards can work and it’s FREE!

2015 Prediction: Google Docs is the new MicroSoft Office!

I just tried out Google Docs over the weekend and I like what I see. Google Docs is Google’s online version of wordprocessor, spreadsheet, and presentation software similar to Microsoft’s Word, Excel, and PowerPoint programs.

Let me explain why you should pay attention to Google Docs. It might change your life by the year 2015!

Firstly these are the essential things you need to know:

1. It’s totally free. It liberates you from the tranny and costs of a MicroSoft Office licenced software.
2. You only need a web browser and an internet connection to use Google Docs.
3. It’s rather capable as a Office Software Suite. I’ll say it CAN satisfy 70% of our usual needs.
4. Files are stored on Google’s servers. You can be able to open my documents from any computer.
5. Many people can work on those files at the same time. You just need to invite people to use a file.

It’s not useful to TALK about how Microsoft’s desktop version is more powerful. It’s more productive to THINK about what Google Docs can do for you right now and in the future!

This is my 2015 timeline prediction of Google Docs:

Year 2010
Google Docs started in 2006 and is part of Google Apps. Companies will start small scale deployments of Gmail storage to eventually replace Microsoft Outlook.

Year 2012
Google Docs gains momentum in SMEs around the world especially in developing countries.

Year 2014
Mobile access of internet becomes main stream. Documents are no longer siloed in desktops. Business are conducted with very smart mobile phones .

Year 2015
Google Docs reaches 80% penetration in major schools and education,40% penetration in corporations . It works along side Microsoft Office as an accepted productivity software.

PowerUp Workshop: Making Beautiful Excel Charts

What if you could turn a drabby Excel chart:

into something like this?

For many Excel users, there is a need to produce clear, concise and even attractive charts in Excel without using expensive software. What is lacking are the clear techniques to do so. Compelled by this need, AEternus has designed a PowerUp Workshop to show participants how to achieve this objective.

The Workshop Outline:

• A collection of Formatting Chart Techniques.
• Demonstration of each technique to achieve beautiful results.
  • How to replicate a Wall Street Journal chart.
  • How to replicate a Economist Magazine chart.
  • How to replicate a New York Times chart (read why this chart is beautiful?).
• Reverse-engineer other beautiful charts.

This 1 day workshop will serve as the pre-requisite for the more advanced Creating Executive Dashboards in Excel workshop.

You can sign up Making Beautiful Excel Charts.

Death by PowerPoint

Excerpts from our workshop & PowerUp Seminar: PowerPoint Design Ideas for the Non Designer.

It is a fact that most presentations suck, and they suck for many reasons.

This seminar is about how to create great looking slides. Making bad slides is easy and we have seen many. Making good slides is easy too, but you need to be willing to invest in your slides and invest in your own visual thinking skills. We’ll help you with the PowerPoint techniques along the way.

A gallery of Beautiful Charts for Excel part 4

I saw these couple of charts from the Standard Chartered Bank website.
Things I like about it:

1. Fresh colour scheme. Blues and greens work well together.
2. Bold titles that explain the intentions of each chart.
3. Each chart has an Increase/Decrease call out to emphasize the conclusion from the data trend.
4. Overall it’s a format that is pleasing to the eyes and easy to understand. Great job!

I hate pie charts for many reasons. But in this case, this particular pie tastes pretty good for the following reasons:

1. It looks pretty. Very nice color scheme . The green & blue hues fits nicely like Lego blocks.
2. Sorted and group slices with the biggest slices at the bottom. I can easily make out which slices are bigger.
3. I don’t feel confused. This pie chart uses only 6 slices which I can mentally organize in my head.
4. Overall clarity is well maintained with the skillful use of color, slice size sorting and small number of slices.

A gallery of Beautiful Charts for Excel part 3

The New York Times has the best illustrated charts I have ever seen. They are visually clear, easy to understand with good copy writing to explain the message behind a story. Note the use of blues and orange shades to give visual contrasts.

A gallery of Beautiful Charts for Excel part 2

I have scoured the web and magazines for beautiful charts designs that we can use in our Excel reports. This will be part of a gallery I am creating. Do visit this blog for regular updates.

A gallery of Beautiful Charts for Excel part 1

I have scoured the web and magazines for beautiful charts designs that we can use in our Excel reports. This will be part of a gallery I am creating. Do visit this blog for regular updates.

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