On the Recommended page, you’ll find links to Stephen Few’s textbooks on visual presentation. With a little extra effort – mostly avoiding Excel’s defaults – you can accomplish many of his teachings with Excel. With a little extra software, you can even mirror his samples (more on that later).

But there are a few additional resources to help you get the stellar results that ought to make a huge positive impression with your audience, and today we’ll take a look at some of them.

First, there’s another Excel blog on this very theme that is well worth your attention. Excel MVP Jon Peltier runs the PTS Blog focused tightly on the charting topic. Jon has run his “traditional” web site for some time, and always had excellent content there. Just a few months ago, Jon added a blog to the site and has been updating it very regularly with fantastic content ever since. Nice work Jon.

Next up is what looks like a great addition to Excel for your visual work. Over at BonaVista Systems you’ll find a collection of programs under the “MicroCharts” umbrella. Their MicroCharts are just that: small charts that pack a lot of punch in a very small space. Just like in the physical world, real estate is at a premium on the page or screen, and maximizing your use of it benefits you and your reader. Compare the sample MicroCharts to some of Mr. Few’s content.

There are also some wonderful articles on design on their site. They’ve just closed entry to an Excel dashboard competition, but haven’t posted the winners quite yet. I wish that I’d known about it earlier; I would have pointed it out to you.

Finally, if you’ve not yet heard of Tableau Software, go spend five minutes or so and watch their product tour. I won’t even try to elaborate on this software – just watch the tour. This is very much a case of “a picture’s worth a thousand words”. I’ve used their demo software and was very pleased with what I could accomplish without any assistance or even reading the online help. While I am not currently using the tool, with the little time I did have with the demo I’m already convinced that I can, and should, recommend it to you.

With these visual additions to your current resources, you’ll see how you can communicate a lot of information to your audience, using the solid foundations you build every day as you continue to excel with Monarch.