Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
easier to read. Click the check mark in the top right of the pop-up when
you finish.
The spreadsheet
in Illustrator is
fairly bare bones,
so you can't easily
manipulate or
rearrange your
data. A way to
get around this
is to do all your
data handling in
Microsoft Excel,
and then copy
and paste into
Illustrator.
The spreadsheet in Il-
lustrator is fairly bare
bones, so you can't easily
manipulate or rearrange
your data. A way to
get around this
is to do all your data han-
dling in Microsoft Excel,
and then copy
and paste into Illustrator.
FIGurE 5-3 Spreadsheet in Illustrator
The default pie chart appears with eight shades of gray, in a seemingly
random sequence with a black border, as shown in Figure 5-4. It kind of
looks like a grayscale lollipop, but you can easily do something about that.
The important thing here is that you have the base of your pie chart.
Now make the pie chart more readable
by changing some colors and adding text
to explain to readers what they are look-
ing at. As it is now, the colors don't make
much sense. They just separate the
wedges, but you can use colors as a way
to tell readers what to look at and in what
order. You did after all go through the
trouble of sorting your data from greatest
to least.
Color can play an
important role in
how people read
your graph. It's not
just an aesthetic
component—
although some-
times it can be.
Color can be a
visual cue just like
length or area, so
choose wisely.
FIGurE 5-4 Default pie chart
If you start at 12 o'clock and rotate clockwise, you should see a descend-
ing order. However, because of the arbitrary color scheme, some of the
smaller wedges are emphasized with darker shades. The dark shade
acts as a highlighter, so instead, make larger wedges darker and smaller
wedges lighter. If for some reason, you want to highlight answers that
have fewer responses, you might want to color in reverse. In the case of
this poll though, you want to know what data-related fields were the most
p op ul ar.
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