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Introducing Chart Chooser

Zach Gemignani

Find and Download Great-Looking Excel and PowerPoint Charts

Chart Chooser is an online tool that answers two questions we commonly get:

  1. What type of chart should I use to show my data?
  2. How can I make good looking Excel or PowerPoint charts?


Chart Chooser


Chart Chooser is easy:

  1. Check the boxes on the left that best describe your objective
  2. Select the chart that you want to use
  3. Choose from Excel or PowerPoint downloads to get a formatted chart template

A few notes about Chart Chooser:

  • Thanks to Andrew Abela of Extreme Presentations for inspiring Chart Chooser with his “Choosing a Good Chart” post and for working with us to put this tool together.
  • We’ve tried to make the charts both Tufte-compliant (i.e. minimal chart-junk) and visually attractive (thanks to Google for the color scheme).
  • Feel free to suggest other types of charts that you’d like to see in the Chart Chooser. Send an example to chartchooser@juiceanalytics.com.
  • If you’d like a customized version of Chart Chooser for your organization, write us at chartchooser@juiceanalytics.com or call me at 202.251.7750.
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  • http://blog.instantcognition.com Clint

    Not bad for a v1 guys – I especially like the waterfall chart as a funnel visualization. The comparative column and bar charts seem a bit noisy though – might be as simple as using thicker bars and columns, then again might not.

  • http://www.26econ.com aaron

    very cool!

    why did you exclude the basic line chart from the ‘relationship’ category but include the two-axis line-column chart?

  • http://juiceanalytics.com Chris Gemignani

    Clint: Sounds like someone’s volunteering…

    Aaron: In my experience, the basic line charts are used to show the performance a bunch of similar series over time. The line-column is typically used in business to show two aspects of the same thing over time, sort of like showing prices and volumes in stock charts.

  • MikeW

    Excellent tool, thanks guys! I’ve sent it round the office so now everyone can create clear, uncluttered charts. RIP grey background!

  • http://grossu.ru grossu

    Awesome. It would be great if you add Numbers for ac format for uploading.

  • http://www.supportanalytics.com/blog Tony

    Guys, great tool much like the Chart Cleaner! I also understand that you aren’t going to be able to please everyone.

    The good: Excel downloads that show the table templates (specifically for the waterfall chart, which many people have trouble with), color schemes and formating are excellent, interactive selecting is great, inclusion of bullet charts and pushing less chartjunk is a big plus.

    Opportunity: I see some downfalls with the options that are presented to me. Much like some of the dashboard tools, it gives me the option of what’s available, but does not indicate what is optimal. For example, by selecting Composition, I get everything from bar charts to waterfall charts, to pie charts, to tables. It may be helpful to possibly rank which are the most effective. Why use a pie chart when a bar chart is a better choice. Or, use a stacked bar chart (I find very ineffective) when a line graph is probably better.

    I think the objective here is to show what’s possible and appeal to the masses. I just question your design when you have previously voiced that some of these break the fundamental rules of data visualization (pie charts).

  • http://radar.oreilly.com Jesse Robbins

    Outstanding work!

  • Joe

    This is awesome! Great time saver. Thanks for the great posts and tips.

  • zaxl

    Great tool! With Chart Cleaner you open mi mind to a whole new world of graphics. This is an excel-ent addition to my arsenal. Many thanks!

  • govi

    Great!
    Using it right now for my scorecards!

  • arun

    I really appreciate your work… the charts are really cool… I am going to use them at work… thanks guys

  • Ed O’Loughlin

    I’m sure it’s a great tool, but http://chartchooser.juiceanalytics.com/ makes Firefox on XP fall over.

  • http://photoblog.la-famille-schwarzer.de Stef

    Hmmm… is it only available for US users? Doesn’t work from my place – Switzerland. Neither in Safari nor in Firefox. Just some kind of legal note appears…

  • http://juiceanalytics.com Chris Gemignani

    Stef: The problems you’re having relate the DNS propagation. We only set up the chartchooser.juiceanalytics.com address earlier this week and it takes a while for all the far corners of the Internet to know about that address. Not that Switzerland is that far away these days.

    If you wait a few days, it should work for you.

    Ed: I’ll give it a try on Firefox with XP.

  • http://www.fantasysportsmatrix.com Michael Vu

    thank you for this! it’s going to be very, very useful for entrepreneurs and business owners.

  • http://processtrends.com Kelly O’Day

    Nice job!

    The line chart uses a legend to identify the 4 data series in the example. Legends add an extra step for chart readers, they have to move their eye back and forth between the lines and the legend. This can interfere with quick, easy chart interpretation.

    Why not use series labels to make it easier for the reader? I’ve modified your line chart file to add a procedure which adds series labels instead of the legend.

    You can see it here.

    Kelly

  • http://processtrends.com Kelly O’Day

    Here’s the link again. It didn’t work when I used http://processtrends.com/toc_chart_doctor.htm#Replace_Legend_with_Series_labels

  • http://www.supportanalytics.com/blog Tony

    Kelly – Nice job! The link in your post above didn’t work, so I just went to your site to find the example. I am a big fan of your changes. I would always opt for series labels versus a legend. They take up less space and make it more visually appealing.

  • http://processtrends.com Kelly O’Day

    This is my 3rd and hopefully final try at getting the link to work.

    http://processtrends.com/toc_chart_doctor.htm

  • http://photoblog.la-famille-schwarzer.de Stef

    Hey there, the website is still not visible from Switzerland! Gush….

  • Mike

    Hi guys!

    This is fu&%$ awesome! Thank you very much for this!

  • Tom

    I love your site and have used several graphs to make myself ‘look good’ at work. Thanks.
    I want to use the Waterfall chart but for the life of me I can not figure out how you remove/hide the color fill from the data points after the first one and leave it in for this one.

    Thanks.

  • http://NA Priya

    Hey thanks for this useful site… I was wondering if there is a write up for different type of charts displayed here, as in what type of data or steps / FAQs etc.

    If I am missing something here, let me know

  • Sowani

    Thank you for your charts very innovative.
    MBA student