An interesting optical illusion is the so-called Hermann Grid illusion: the effect of seeing gray dots at the intersections of a black grid on a white background or a white grid on a black background.

 
 
 
 
While it’s an interesting optical illusion, it’s something we should avoid in management reporting:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Tables formatted with medium or thick black or [...]

Most reports are based on combinations of tabular layouts, so to continue my series about visual design (see my previous post) I will focus on the most common and simple problem to fix: The fundamentals of how to align numbers and text in tables and how to treat their headings.
Here are the rules

Right-align a block [...]

I get asked by a lot of people how I seem to be able to format my charts and tables so that they look good and still convey the information in the most effective manner. I thought I would share my experience through my blog posts.
The first thing to know is that I like to [...]