For years I have written that we Excel users should create "magazine quality" charts for our reports and analyses.

However, we must be very careful about the magazines and other publications we imitate.

Currently, The Wall Street Journal is my favorite source of charting examples. Most of its charts are well designed. The Economist magazine is also a good source. BusinessWeek and Fortune used to be great resources, but now publish very few charts.

Unfortunately, if their special issue "The World 2012" is any indication of things to come, then The Economist magazine should be moved to the "No Imitation" list.

Unlike BusinessWeek and Fortune, The Economist remains inspiring to Excel chart builders. But now, that magazine teaches us what not to do.

For example, in the chart above, the chart compares the price of gold to bond yields. For the typical reader of The Economist, this kind of information is really interesting.

But be aware that when magazines show these interesting statistics, they make terrible choices. Graphic artists at The Economist disguised their data with distracting images of coins. Additionally, they make the chart unusually large and the font unusually small. That's why the font is almost microscopic when I shrink the diagram to normal size in these illustrations.

This gray chart shows oil prices over the past five years and is similar to the chart above.

Like the first chart, this chart displays data that should be of interest to most readers. Just like they did with the first chart, the magazine added visual noise to the graph.

Do you read the newspaper regularly while the kids are arguing, the dog is barking, the TV is blaring, and the cat is scratching your legs? If so, this table should make you feel right at home.

This is another example of chart junk in disguise.

If you do this, you can focus on the bar graph and ignore the workers and cranes cluttering the graph.

The problem with adding this kind of embellishment is that it forces us readers to work harder than discovering the hidden meaning in the data.

Such unrelated decoration resembles ancient examples of illuminated writing, such as the 12th-century example.

Today, especially in business documents and publications, we don’t illuminate text or decorate diagrams. Both types of decoration are obstacles on the path to knowledge.

Here is another example of a chart compiled by The Economist.

At least in this graph, spam doesn't disguise itself as a bar chart showing Spain's total unemployment rate.

However, the unemployment rate among 15 to 24 year olds in Spain is another matter. The orange bag illustrates this measure with an unknown scale. Note that it is not possible to visually compare the two sets of exchange rates.

Also note that while The Economist has plenty of room for nonsense caricatures and mixed chart types, there is no room for the word ?Spain? in the chart!

When creating an Excel chart, always include key facts (e.g. ?Spain?) that can give readers hints about the data the chart displays. Never add cartoons or other irrelevant decorations just to make your chart more interesting.

If your readers find your data boring, adding meaningless embellishments to the chart will not make them find your data fascinating.

Here’s a final good example of bad graphics from the same issue of The Economist:

Pie charts are widely used, but that’s not the case. This is because humans cannot easily compare the relative sizes of each piece of pie. (Comparing two slices of a pie chart isn't as difficult as comparing a bar chart to a hand-drawn balloon, but it's close.

)

In this diagram, The Economist started with a bad design decision using a pie chart and then made the situation worse. First, it distorts the shape of the pie, which makes the slices more difficult to compare. Then it appends straight lines and curves to the graph? These embellishments take people away from the message the chart is supposed to convey.

The chart above tells readers of The Economist: You are probably just as bored with business and economics as we are. So we are adding beautiful pictures and cartoons to the characters. Soon we will make our magazine even more interesting by adding happy music, dancing bulls and bears! ?

I hope this is not the direction they are heading. I hope the horrific chart numbers in The World 2012 are an aberration for The Economist.