This week’s Makeover Monday data set came from a holiday/calendar database with holidays and observances around the world. Because of the variety in classification of holiday (in regards to what the classification was called) I boiled it down to the US and UK National or Federal holidays and observances.
My original thought was to do a blue/green theme, to represent the Atlantic Ocean, and the two land masses, but I ended up with a slightly different feel that I really liked.
I found two images on The Noun Project that I really liked; the US and UK made of horizontal lines. Those images lead me to the bar charts and then everything fell in to place.
Three really cool tricks on this dashboard.
- Using a Transparent Square to overlay the BAN
I have when I select a field and it shades a color that I have no control over. To avoid this, I use a transparent shape, then make it as big as possible so that it doesn’t show.
Then, create your BAN as normal using the label of the shape. Now when select the number, the non-selected option “greys-out” and it gives a little cleaner look.
2. The Hidden Sheet – Pooja did this cool trick on her Bob Ross dashboard, having a sheet appear and overlay another element when an action is performed. In this case, I create a detail list of the holidays, and had it appear when I clicked the summary visual (the BAN w/ the transparent square). Then, when the summary is deselected, I exclude all values, making the sheet disappear and showing the stacked lollypop again.
3. Stacked Lollypop – I wanted to visualize the holidays by month, so I was inspired by Chantilly and her viz on restrictive diets. Specifically the way she flipped the bars on either side of the globe. I had them “reaching in” across to my centralized listing of months.
I started with a stacked bar, using a custom group that I made designating whether or not the holiday/observance was religion-based or not. I then did a dual axis, adding a table calc on the # of holidays to get the running sum so that the circles would fall in the right places. I added a numeric label so I could drop the axis and after wrestling with the sorting (on the UK side) I had what I wanted.
