Chapter 6. Formatting a Visualization to Look Great and Work Well
Formatting is about more than just making a data visualization look good. Presentation can make a huge difference to the way it is received and understood. As you move beyond making great discoveries and doing great analysis, you'll want to consider how you will present the story of the data.
Tableau's formatting options give you quite a bit of flexibility. Fonts, titles, captions, colors, row and column banding, labels, shading, annotations, and much more can be customized to make your visualizations tell a story well.
This chapter will cover the following topics:
Formatting considerations
Understanding how formatting works in Tableau
Adding value to visualizations
Formatting considerations
Tableau employs good practices for formatting and visualization from the time you start dropping fields on shelves. Tableau 10 additionally introduces a variety of new fonts, colors, and defaults that emphasize aesthetic appeal. You'll find that the discrete palettes use colors that are easy to distinguish, fonts are pleasant, grid lines are faint where appropriate, and numbers and dates follow the default format settings defined in the metadata.
The default formatting is more than adequate for discovery and analysis. If your focus is analysis, you may not want to spend too much time fine-tuning the formatting until you have moved on in the cycle. However, when you start to consider how you will communicate the data to others, you will need to contemplate how adjustments to formatting can make a difference in how well the data story is told.
Tip
Sometimes, you will have certain formatting preferences in mind when you start your design. In these cases, you might set...
Understanding how formatting works in Tableau
Tableau uses default formatting that includes default fonts, colors, shading, and alignment. Additionally, there are several levels of formatting you can customize, as shown in the following diagram:
Workbook level: The following type of formatting comes under this category:
Workbook defaults: from the menu, select Format | Workbook. The ability to set certain formatting as the default for the workbook is new to Tableau 10.
Default field formatting: Using the drop down menu on a field in the data pane, navigate to Default Properties | Date Format or Default Properties | Number Format. This sets the default format in Tableau's metadata and will be applied to any view where custom formatting has not been applied.
Story level: Navigate to a story tab and navigate to Format | Story (or Story | Format) to edit formatting for story specific elements. These include options for customizing shading, title, navigator, and description.
Dashboard level...
Adding value to visualizations
Now that we've considered how formatting works in Tableau, let's take a look at some ways in which formatting can add value to a visualization.
When you apply custom formatting, always ask yourself what the formatting adds to the understanding of the data. Is it making the visualization clearer and easier to understand? Or is it just adding clutter and noise?
In general, go for a minimalistic approach. Remove everything from the visualization that isn't necessary. Emphasize important values, text, and marks while de-emphasizing those which are only providing support or context.
Consider the following visualization using all default formatting:
The default format works very well. But compare that with this visualization:
Both the preceding charts are showing sales by quarter, filtered to the office supplies department. With the exception that the top view has the department field on Columns in an attempt to make it clear that only office supplies sales are being...
The goal of formatting is to increase the effective communication of the data. Always consider the audience, setting, mode, mood, and consistency as you work through the iterative process of formatting. Look for formatting that adds value to your visualization and avoid useless clutter. With an understanding of how formatting works in Tableau, you'll have the ability to refine the visualizations you created in discovery and analysis into incredibly effective communication of your data story. Next, we'll look at how it all comes together in dashboards.
