Then, enter your color codes in Excel!

Step 1: Make Your Chart

Build your graph. Here’s a histogram that displays how many people fell into each age range. The default graph has Microsoft’s blue.

Step 2: Edit Your Chart as Needed

Declutter that cluttered graph. Delete the border, grid lines, title, and vertical axis. Label the columns directly. Nudge the columns closer together.

Step 3: Select Your Chart

Now it’s time to customize the color. Click on the bar, line, or pie wedge that you want to adjust. Can you see that the columns are selected?

Step 4: Click on More Fill Colors

Go to Chart Tools, then Format, and then Shape Outline (line graphs) or Shape Fill (all other types of graphs, like this one). Ignore the default colors! Go to the bottom where it says More Fill Colors.

Step 5: Choose a Custom Fill

On the pop-up window, click on the Custom tab.

Step 6: Type Your RGB Codes

Enter your RGB code. RGB stands for red, green, and blue. This is the recipe of reds, greens, and blues that get mixed together to produce your exact shade.

I used 120, 29, 125, which is the exact shade of purple from a client’s logo. Now I can quickly customize other pieces of the graph, like the numeric labels, because that purple is already stored under Recent Colors.

Bonus

With just a few clicks, custom colors reinforce branding and make you look professional.

Purchase the histogram template ($5)

The post How to Enter Your Custom Color Codes in Microsoft Excel appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Hi! I am Matt Feldmann with Goshen Education Consulting in Southwestern Illinois (near St. Louis). Ann asked me to write this guest blog post to show you how to look up specific RGB color codes with a program you likely have already pre-installed on your computer–Microsoft Paint. Ann has previously discussed how to use an Instant eyedropper program to look up these color codes and how to use those codes to change your color scheme in Excel. If you are like me, you don’t like to download new software…and you don’t need to if you use Microsoft Windows.

Take a Screenshot and Paste It Into Paint

• I use shortcut keys. Press: ALT+PRTSCN
• Open MS Paint.
• Paste your screen shot using either CTRL+V, right clicking on your mouse and selecting PASTE, or selecting the PASTE button in MS Paint.

The following is a pasted screenshot from an upcoming conference:

Use Color Picker to Identify a Color

Color Picker looks like an eyedropper and it is in the Tools section. It is identified below with my red arrow:

Select the Desired Color with the Eyedropper and Select Edit Colors

I selected the green color with the eyedropper and it automatically switched Color 1 to green.

Edit Colors is on the far right.

Record the RGB Codes for Future Use

The following is the screen that pops up when you edit colors. The Red, Green, Blue colors are on the right.

But wait–isn’t Paint dead? Apparently not. However, if you want to use the newer MS Paint 3D program (which is preloaded with Windows 10), there also is an eyedropper that records your RGB codes. As a bonus, it will also give you a Hex code.

The post How to Find Your Custom Color Codes with Paint appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

You can find your custom color codes with an eyedropper. Eyedroppers are color detection tools. You hover over your logo, and then the eyedropper does its magic and tells you the color code—within seconds.

On PCs, you can find eyedroppers within newer versions of PowerPoint and Word. But not in Excel, sadly. Microsoft still hasn’t figured out that its millions of users actually want to make good-looking, customized graphs and that we’re fed up with dated default settings.

On Macs, you can find eyedroppers in a bunch of different places. Mac users, stop reading. This post isn’t for you. It’s for the other 75 percent of my readers whose jobs still supply them with PCs that are loaded with older versions of Excel.

Download an Eyedropper

There are tons of eyedropper tools available online for free. Don’t pay for one.

I’ve used www.instant-eyedropper.com for years and highly recommend it. It’s free, fast, and easy, the perfect trifecta. Hit download…

…and Instant Eyedropper will show up in your Start menu…

…or in your System Tray.

Tell Your Eyedropper Which Types of Color Codes to Identify

Right-click on the Instant Eyedropper icon and select HTML, Hex, RGB, etc. If you’re going to be using Excel, then you’ll want RGB codes. RGB stands for red, green, blue and it’s the recipe of red, green, and blue that get mixed together to produce the colors in your logo.

Hover Over Your Colors

Let’s pretend that I wanted to visualize data for the Alabama Power Elevate Movement, where I recently led a three-day workshop and keynoted their conference for the Foundation’s grantees. I pulled up their website. Then, I clicked on the Instant Eyedropper icon from my System Tray. I held down my mouse and hovered over the purple section of the website.

Within seconds, the eyedropper tells me that their purple is a 148, 97, 170. I would do the same thing for the teal, yellow, red, and green. Then, I would enter those codes into my software program. I’ll teach you where to enter your color codes next time. It’s easy.

Readers, there are dozens of eyedroppers available. Which ones are your favorites, and why?

The post How to Find Your Custom Color Codes with an Eyedropper appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Consultants, I suggest using your client’s palette, not your own. Show that you’ve gone the extra mile in customizing your work especially for them. This is one of the primary reasons that I’ve been running my own company for three years and am just now thinking about the branding and logo process—I simply haven’t needed to because my work has been produced for a specific client with their unique color palette. Also, there’s nothing gaudier in the consulting world than plastering your firm’s logo on every single page you’ve made. Focus on doing good work, and clients will hunt you down.

“Ann, I’m on board with using our palette. But when I’m designing graphs in my software program, I can’t seem to pick out colors that are a close enough match to our logo. How can I eyeball the colors better?” No eyeballing! You need to find your color codes from an existing style guide.

Locate Your Existing Style Guide

Most organizations already have a style guide (a.k.a. design guide or graphic standards guide). Your guide might talk about your logo, colors, or fonts. Your guide might even contain writing guidance, like whether you’re going to call it decisionmaking or decision-making or decisionmaking and that you should spell out numbers zero through nine and use numerals for number 10 and up.

I’m going to show off USAID’s Graphic Standards Manual as an example today. It’s publicly-available, but more importantly, it’s the most comprehensive guide I’ve seen and is worthy of showcasing here. In 94 pages, the guide covers everything—the logo’s history, its proper placement on a page, instructions for selecting images, fonts, colors, and much more. USAID has staff and consultants located all over the world, so this detailed manual helps all those people stay on the same page. I’m not saying you need a 94-page style guide. Most of you can cover everything you need in about five pages.

Are You Sure I Have a Style Guide?

Smaller organizations—food banks, afterschool programs, etc.—simply don’t have the budget to hire a graphic designer to produce a style guide. They usually have a logo, though. My next post will teach you how to find color codes from your logo using an eyedropper tool.

Larger organizations almost always have a style guide. You just might not know where to find it. Ask your teammates who work in communications. Their title might be something like Communications Specialist rather than Graphic Designer. Part of their job involves making sure that your externally-facing materials have consistent formatting so that you look professional.

Your communications person usually knows exactly where to find your style guide. It’s probably hiding within your company’s intranet, perhaps beneath a few layers of folders or behind a password-protected wall. These aren’t private documents exactly—anyone can tell what your logo, colors and fonts are just by looking at your website—so I’m finding that more style guides are available through a quick internet search.

Consultants, just email your client and ask for a copy of their style guide. I usually write, “Hi Client, could you please send me your style guide? I want to make sure all the products we’re making reflect your brand’s colors and fonts. Your style guide is probably 5 to 10 pages long, and it probably lives on your intranet. Your in-house communications team might also have a copy.” Half of my clients can find their style guide right away, and the other half need to ask their communications person (who can find the guide right away).

Find the Color Section of Your Style Guide

Page 28 is the important one:

Decode the Jargon in Your Style Guide

You’ve got your style guide. Now what?

• Style guides usually include both primary colors and secondary colors. You’ll recognize your primary colors right away. These are usually the two or three core colors from your logo. You might recognize your secondary colors from your website, newsletter, and other documents. These are colors that complement your logo. A professional graphic designer worked their magic and chose a blend of primary and secondary colors that match, i.e., the right blend of pastels, bright colors, or muted colors.
• Color definitions are the in-house name for your color. For example, they call their blue USAID blue. I see a few dozen style guides each year and only a fraction include color definitions.
• SPOT colors, aka Pantone colors tend to be used by your internal graphic design staff or your external graphic design consultants. They’re also used in manufacturing, e.g., to make sure the physical objects you’re building in your warehouse match the physical objects being built in another warehouse. You hold up your Pantone color swatches and make sure your plastic, metal, or fabric item matches the correct swatch. From my experience, Pantone colors aren’t very common in style guides either, so don’t panic if you don’t see Pantone colors listed in yours. Just recently, I noticed that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s style guide only listed Pantone colors—no CMYK, hex codes, or RGB codes—and it was so surprising that I feel compelled to share that rarity here.
• CMYK colors stand for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. This is your photocopier machine’s language. CMYK colors tell your printer which shades of ink to print on your papers.
• Hexadecimal web colors, or hex codes, are for your website. Hex codes begin with a number sign or hashtag, and they include six letters or numbers. These are the codes that your website people type into their HTML code to make sure your logo colors are reflected exactly right in your website. You might also find them in web-based data visualization programs. For example, colorbrewer2.org gives you the hex codes, CMYK codes, and RGB codes for each of their color palettes, but the hex codes are listed first. Google Drive products also ask for hex codes.
• RGB colors stand for red, green, and blue. This is Excel’s main color language.

Don’t have a style guide? Can’t find it? In the next post, I’ll teach you to find color codes with an eyedropper tool.

Readers, is your company’s style guide publicly available? If so, link to your guide here. They all look a little different, and the more varieties you see, the easier it is to decode your own.

The post How to Find Your Custom Color Codes with a Style Guide (and Decode the Jargon) appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Color is about much, much more than simply making your graphs look pretty.

When used well, color can enhance branding, guide viewers’ eyes to the most important pieces of the graph, and reinforce the underlying nature of the data, all while being legible when photocopied in black and white and for people with colorblindness.

I talk about these techniques in depth during our workshops, webinars, and courses.

Today, let’s focus on just one technique–matching your publication’s color palette to your brand and logo.

Avoid Default Color Palettes

First, the enemy we’re avoiding: the software program’s default color palette.

(And major bragging rights to anyone who can correctly identify these software programs in the comments section!)

Default color palettes scream I have no idea what I’m doing, or, worse!, I know I should be customizing my graph’s colors but I didn’t take 30 seconds to do it.

Use Branding Colors Instead of Default Colors

Here’s what we’re aiming for instead: selecting colors from an organization’s existing branding and identity.

Custom colors make our work look polished and professional.

Custom colors shout I care about my work and this graph was designed specifically for YOU with special thought and attention and data is central to our work and our stellar graphs reflect that commitment to data.

Here are the custom colors from a few groups we’ve recently worked with.

Whose Colors: Yours, or the Recipient’s?

Will you use your own organization’s colors or the viewers’ colors?

For example, a consulting firm might use their own color palette when writing the proposal for the work and switch to using their client’s colors for the deliverables.

A nonprofit might use their own color palette when publishing their annual report on their own website, but switch to their funder’s color palette when submitting quarterly reports on the outcomes they have achieved.

I don’t care whose color palette you use. I care that you’ve put conscious thought into this decision and can explain your reasoning to someone else.

Matching colors to branding is just one piece of the effective-use-of-color puzzle. But it’s the first and perhaps most important step.

Your Turn

But wait! Here’s where you come in.

Bonus points for helping me find organizations that are doing a good job of customizing the colors in their graphs.

Share a link to their reports, to their handouts, or to their slidedecks.

Celebrate the good work that’s being done!

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