Creating templates with an over styled look for those eye catching one off examples and showcase galleries are great for that initial wow factor. However, the eye catching parts of the chart may also be a bit too much and they end up being distracting.

Overstyled:

Instead, consider using a classic minimalism design that’s stripped down to its most fundamental features. In other words, where less is more. A crisp and clean style that’s also pleasing to the eye.

Classic:

For this look you will need to use softer grids or removing them. You will also need to remove the tic labels and replace the black fonts with a softer gray. Basically remove things that wouldn’t be necessary and leave what’s most important. This way the colors alone will provide enough contrast to display the data without anything else being distracting.

Off course, I think that finding a middle ground between these two extremes can also work very well. In other words, adding a subtle touch of style to the minimalistic chart.

Modern:

Here, the idea of a modern style was applied where the grids use a soft gray to blend in with the background without being distracting. The bars use rounded corners for style, and to show some depth without being excessive, a soft highlight simulating a light source from the left with a darker highlight on the opposite side. A soft drop shadow was also added on the opposite side of the simulated light source.

If you think the Classic and Modern styles look great, you are in luck! They are included as default style options in our latest release of NetCharts Performance Dashboards 2.5. If you happen to like the over styled example, don’t worry. I’ll go into further detail in another blog topic about how to create even nicer ones.