Are you printing or PDFing that Excel table? If it’s a long table, and spills onto a second page, then you’ll need to keep the table headings in view.

Here’s how you can repeat a few rows at the top of each page.

What’s Inside

0:00 Welcome to Dataviz On The Go

0:08 The Visual Appendices

0:22 The PDF/Print Issue, Oops!

0:42 The Best Solution

1:42 3… 2… 1…

Dotted lines have a specific purpose in dataviz: for projections or estimations. Not just because.

Stick around for the how-to lesson in Microsoft Excel.

You’ll learn how to select a single dot (or “marker”) along the line, which controls the preceding line segment.

Then, you can turn just one section of the graph into a dotted line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=titF7TQcwDc

What’s Inside

0:00 Don’t Use Dotted Lines “Just Because”

0:20 Dotted Lines are for Projections or Estimations

1:24 How to Make Dotted Lines on Excel Graphs

3:44 Questions??

Is “color on color” hard to read?

Short answer: YES.

Long answer: Let’s do an official color contrast check: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

You’ll also see how to fix it.

What’s Inside

0:00 Intro to Yellow on Red Example from Workshop

0:16 The Short Answer (Avoid Color on Color)

0:29 The Long Answer (Color Contrast Check)

1:35 Rules for Regular vs. Large Text

2:05 How Do We Fix It??

2:43 The Before-After Difference

A good rule of thumb: If your map feels too dense… try small multiples!

Before, we started with a single map… with 2 variables. Counts and rates. A bubble map on top of a heat map.

After, we’ll use small multiples: 2 separate maps, 1 for each variable. The headings, color-coding, takeaway sentences, bolding, and annotations will help to explain our patterns, too.

What’s Inside

0:00 Welcome to Dataviz On The Go!

0:16 Before: Map with 2 Variables (Circles AND Shading)

1:07 After: Small Multiples!

1:24 Call-Out Boxes (aka “Annotations”)

1:46 The Before-After Makeover

2:12 Your Questions??

Brand colors are great.

Color-coding by category is greater.

But avoid using those brand colors as body font within paragraphs.

Colored font is okay for headers, but not for the body.

What’s Inside

0:00 Intro

0:31 Before: Example from a Public Workshop

1:33 After: Dark Dark Dark Gray Body Font

2:21 The Before-After Difference