Singapore population infographic in Microsoft Excel

This is an info-graphic I created in Microsoft Excel. It shows the population composition of Singapore in 2009. The world map and the stick-man was from the standard web-ding font. The only exception was the Singapore flag which I copied from Wikipedia. Nothing fancy was used. Just pure Excel 2007 features, no more no less.

Who says Microsoft Excel is only for number crunching?

See the full pic: Singapore Population Info-graphic 1105x490.

Ugly Real Economic Growth Chart from Singapore Statistics-Part 2

Quoting from my favourite marketeer Seth Godin:

The only way to succeed is to be remarkable, to be talked about

So I was really amused that Peltier Tech picked up on my past article “Ugly Real Economic Growth Chart from Singapore Statistics” and was inspired to write another. Good ideas do travel.

I made certain aesthetics changes to an original chart from Singapore Statistics.
Some modest changes and this was created:

What mirthed me was that the author proposed charts that had everything I hate about Excel charts.

He merely recoloured the original ugly chart! Compare and see for yourself.

I always wanted to combine business aesthetics and business savvy in Excel charts.
In my latest workshop Making Beautiful Excel Charts I will break all the traditional rules in Excel charting. What you get are designer-quality charting ideas with Excel.

Let me summarise some typical visual sins with a page from my new book.

That being said, I whipped up another version. Without be-labouring the point, the results are obvious for everyone to see.

Let me end this with Seth Godin’s words again:

The new Dream that markets around the world are embracing is this:

1. Be Remarkable
2. Be generous
3. Create Art
4. Make Judgement calls
5. Connect people to new ideas

and we have no choice but to reward you.

If you can measure it, you can definitely dashboard it!

Dashboards can be used to show important KPIs (key performance indicators) for all sorts of industries and work processes. If you can measure it, you can definitely dashboard it! I’ve made a short list of useful KPIs along with the relevant industries. With a bit of imagination & Microsoft Excel techniques you can create endless variations of dashboards.

Insurance

% of fraudulent insurance claims.
% of overdue premium.
Number of new insurance policies.

Investment

Return on Equity (ROE).
Internal Rate Of Return (IRR).
Net present value (NPV).

Information Technology

% of network bandwith used.
Number of SLA breaches due to poor performance.
% of virus incidents.

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.

There is a part 2 to this story:

Ugly Real Economic Growth Chart from Singapore Statistics-Part 2

Quoting from my favourite marketeer Seth Godin:

The only way to succeed is to be remarkable, to be talked about

So I was really amused that Peltier Tech picked up on my past article “Ugly Real Economic Growth Chart from Singapore Statistics” and was inspired to write another. Good ideas do travel.

I made certain aesthetics changes to an original chart from Singapore Statistics.
Some modest changes and this was created:

What mirthed me was that the author proposed charts that had everything I hate about Excel charts.

He merely recoloured the original ugly chart! Compare and see for yourself.

I always wanted to combine business aesthetics and business savvy in Excel charts.
In my latest workshop Making Beautiful Excel Charts I will break all the traditional rules in Excel charting. What you get are designer-quality charting ideas with Excel.

Let me summarise some typical visual sins with a page from my new book.

That being said, I whipped up another version. Without be-labouring the point, the results are obvious for everyone to see.

Let me end this with Seth Godin’s words again:

The new Dream that markets around the world are embracing is this:

1. Be Remarkable
2. Be generous
3. Create Art
4. Make Judgement calls
5. Connect people to new ideas

and we have no choice but to reward you.

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!

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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