Wacky and Colorful

I often receive interesting ideas and suggestions from friends which forms the basis of some weird visualization. While personally, I prefer to keep my charts simple, effective and legible, I go creative listening to ideas from others.

A friend of mine recently changed jobs. Before making his first presentation, he wrote to me about designing a chart which would WOW all his audience and help him to make a dramatic impact.

The data was about units of products sold in each region and compared with similar data of competitors. Needless to mention, a simple column chart would have served his purpose well. But not to my friend. On his insistence, I drew up a dummy table, and served him the following.

They look like abstract paintings. Right? Utterly amazed and curious, I thought of using this template on the Eurozone Debt data and came up with an even more wackier and colorful one.

In both cases, the width of the lines are indicative of their values. I've avoided using labels in the second chart thinking they would add more clutter.

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The Playfair Charts: Scotland ExIm Barchart

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Somnath's Excel Charts

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