A professionally designed report can make a significant difference in how data is understood and used within the organization. In this webinar, you will learn how to tailor Power BI reports to your company's visual identity and improve both their appearance and usability.

How should you adapt your sales and marketing reports to your company’s colors and fonts so that they match the style of its brand and graphic elements? And how can you improve financial reports by using familiar colors and fonts to create a professional, consistent presentation?

In this webinar, you will see examples of useful and user-friendly reports:

Watch the recording and demo below:

Here you can read the transcript of the entire video:

How to customize Power BI reports in your company profile

Frode Stenstrøm: Have you ever seen a report that just feels right—one that is easy to understand and communicates effectively? The value of any report depends on everyone who sees it understanding it in the same way, and on whether the report also represents your company. In today’s broadcast, we’ll explore Power BI design and look at how to choose the right fonts and colors and remove all the clutter so that your report is clear and easy to understand. To show us how to do all this, we’ve invited Yuliia into the studio. She’ll demonstrate how to create the world’s best Power BI reports.

Welcome back! Thank you. You weren't too scared off the first time, so we're giving it another go. Yes! And if you haven't seen it before, Yuliia has previously done a show with us on the topic of Power BI.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes!

Frode Stenstrøm: We did. And today, I’ve given you a huge challenge. This challenge stems from an area that I’ve been very concerned about for quite some time: many reports can contain far too much information, making it difficult for those viewing them to understand what they say.

Or perhaps their design isn't particularly well thought out. All the figures are there, in a sense, but do we understand them? And then I was really inspired, because you've created some reports for us at ProsessPilotene that look so polished, and I thought, yes, is that Power BI? So that's some of the background for today's webinar, and then I gave you a challenge:

Can you show us how you create such great reports?

Yuliia Kamkova: I can try.

Frode Stenstrøm: You can give it a try, yes. It'll be great. And for those who haven't met you before, who are you?

Yuliia Kamkova: I’m still Yuliia Kamkova, and I work here at ProsessPilotene as a functional consultant. Today, I’m going to show you everything you mentioned. So there will be some tips and practical information, as well as a short demo.

So, we're going to customize a standard report to match the company's themes and colors. There will be lots going on... inside Power BI, so I think it's going to be exciting.

Frode Stenstrøm: And you’re also going to show us some design theory. Now that I’ve seen what you’re going to present, I’m really looking forward to it. This is an area I know very little about, so I’ll just have to rely on you, and then we’ll take it from there.

My name is Frode Stenstrøm, and I am the host of today’s broadcast. As usual, we are streaming live on YouTube, so feel free to share your best tips and questions with us along the way. We will bring them up and display your questions. So tell us who you are. As usual, we will add subtitles and chapters to the recording, so you can jump to the part that is most relevant to you.

And we’d also like to remind you about the Process Podcast, where we have quite a few great podcast episodes about reporting, becoming data-driven, and which metrics are important for those working with insights and analytics in their company. So, what are you planning to show us today?

Yuliia Kamkova: So today's agenda will start with a bit of theory on design principles, followed by an exciting demo.

So first, we'll talk a little about customizing the color palette, how to choose one, how to find colors, and some tips for doing so. We'll also discuss logos and other visual elements, and how to add them to a report so that it fits the company. And we'll talk about interactive visualization, because Power BI isn't just a dashboard; it isn't an Excel file that you view as a PDF. In fact, interactivity offers a lot of useful features.

And finally, we will publish and share the report we have created.

Frode Stenstrøm: And then you also had the tools you use.

Yuliia Kamkova: Oof, there are going to be lots of links today.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, it will.

Yuliia Kamkova: So I hope it will be useful to people.

Frode Stenstrøm: And as I said, just ask questions along the way. The point of this is to share a little and provide some inspiration by showing what can be done in Power BI.

But also the tools you can use, because there are a number of things that ... Yes, we don't actually use only Microsoft tools.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, that's right. It will mainly be Power BI Desktop, which is a tool from Microsoft. But that's not enough to create designs.

Frode Stenstrøm: We are not going to show what we use. So we thought we would start with the first thing, which is the design principles.

Were you going to say something about that?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so when we talk about design principles, there are four things we need to keep in mind. First, there is context and target audience. So what should the report be about, and who should it communicate with? Next are layout and balance: which visualization should we use, and how should we position it on the page?

Next, we'll talk about focus and the people viewing the report, because people ... can't focus on everything at once. Then we'll cover some tricks for guiding people to look at what you want them to see. And finally, we'll talk about colors and text typography. This is actually about Power BI themes. So we'll talk a lot about creating Power BI themes that ensure consistent use of the same colors and fonts, making everything feel cohesive.

Frode Stenstrøm: And I would like to add here that this is actually quite similar to what those of you who work with interaction design and communication do. Many of the same design principles apply. But what I often see is that those who create Power BI reports today go straight to cramming in as many numbers as possible. In a way, they have then demonstrated the functionality.

But that brings me back to the fact that when we have tested Power BI reports with customers, they interpret the figures in different ways. And that is precisely what makes it so difficult to get there.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, and that communication—data storytelling, as it’s called—is a big part of it. Because you can become really good at creating Power BI reports.

You can create all the calculations perfectly in DAX formulas. But if you present them the wrong way, then... So, yes, the impression the report gives will be wrong because you are communicating the data you have incorrectly.

Frode Stenstrøm: So you said the first point was context and target audience, and now we'll move on to the next part of the presentation, which is precisely about that.

And there you have it—shall I just go through the who, what, and where?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so when we talk about context and target audience, there are three questions we need to ask before creating a report. Who is the report intended to communicate with? What is the target audience for the report? Try to avoid broad target audiences such as all internal employees or all external customers.

Try to be more specific: is it the sales manager, or is it customers? Yes, or is it the marketing department, or just the management team? You need to identify the person who will view the report and make a decision.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, I think that’s a very important first tip from you, because if you try to create a report that communicates everything to everyone, it just becomes a mess, and the same applies to web design.

If you can decide that this application should target this person or user group, it becomes easier.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, that tells you more specifically what to communicate. Once you have decided who, you move on to the next question: what. So, what does your target audience need to know, or what does your target audience need to do? Because every report should either prompt an action or provide something people need to know.

If that report is just a report and does nothing—if no decision is made based on it—then the report provides no value to the company. So try to answer those two questions, or one of them.

Frode Stenstrøm: And that means they need to know how the report will be used. I have asked that question quite a few times to customers who say they need a report.

So I ask, how are you going to use it? Well, we need to know those figures! Then I say—yes, but why?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so you're really good

Frode Stenstrøm: Well, I wouldn't say that...

Yuliia Kamkova: Because yes, asking the right questions is an art. Because if you ask the right questions, then you can answer those questions. And if the questions are good enough, then the visualizations will be good enough, and ultimately, the report will be good enough.

So how? That will be the last thing, and it is actually about the visualizations we are going to use, as well as the data that is available. So perhaps you need more data. Perhaps you do not need all the data that is available, in which case the report will be a little easier to download and view. So before you start doing anything in Power BI Desktop, begin with the three questions.

Maybe you can write it in the Excel file, or just make some notes, but think about it.

Frode Stenstrøm: And I actually think that's a good starting point: that you take a somewhat process-oriented approach, ask the question, and then we move on. The next point you said you were going to cover was this one called layout and balance.

What do you mean by that?

Yuliia Kamkova: So, when we design a Power BI report, we need to add different visualizations. But to do that, we need to have an idea of what the report should look like—whether it will have lots of different elements or just two or three. So ... first, try to create some kind of draft, and for that we use different visualizations, as shown here in the first box.

We can see the standard visualizations in Power BI, and I have placed red boxes around the ones that are used most often.

Frode Stenstrøm: That's correct.

Yuliia Kamkova: And the one on the third row, for example, which is a pie chart—try to avoid it. It is not considered best practice. Let's see. But that is just based on my experience and what I have seen; the three rows are the most commonly used.

Frode Stenstrøm: But can you create your own visualizations in Power BI in addition to these?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes.

Frode Stenstrøm: Could you make something custom, for example?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, if we look at the three dots at the bottom, we can add custom visualizations, yes, those three, which were created by different people. But ... It is possible to create one, but that is a completely different art. Because you have to use, yes, it could be an SVG visualization, which might be quite easy.

But if you go deeper and deeper, you can create a lot. But that's a completely different direction. We won't talk much about that today.

Frode Stenstrøm: What do you mean here by PowerPoint and Figma? Now I’m curious.

Yuliia Kamkova: So yes, once we've decided how... Which visualization we're going to use. We need to think about how we're going to place it on the slide.

So first, you can use—for me, the easiest option is PowerPoint because, well, everyone knows how to use PowerPoint.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, so you visualize the report in PowerPoint? ,

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, you just draw in PowerPoint what it should look like, but you can also do it in Figma. So if, I know, you have lots of drawings in Figma.

Frode Stenstrøm: We do a lot of drawing in Figma, yes

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so perhaps it would be easier to try drawing in Figma.

The third option is to use pen and paper—old-fashioned, but for me, using pen and paper perhaps allows for a little more creativity. And then you can also add a bit more design and, I don't know, just choose what works best. And the fourth option we have here is the website Mokkup.ai.

Frode Stenstrøm: Should I show that website now, then?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, I can show you.

Yes, so it’s a free website designed for Power BI, and it has the same visualizations as Power BI, which we can place on the page.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, I didn't know that. That's really clever.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, and then it’s a little easier to think, okay, maybe if I add another bar chart, it’ll be a bit too much, or if, for example, I only have drag-and-drop, it can be useful sometimes to think about how to design that website.

Frode Stenstrøm: Are there any free tools?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, there is a free version. You can buy a premium version or something like that, but to create it, for example, I only used the free version.

Frode Stenstrøm: Simply to create a mock-up?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so it's mock-up AI.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, but that's a really great tip. It's a really great tip, because I use Figma as a design tool, and in earlier phases you can also use pen and paper just to sketch out some ideas and get them down on paper, but using that kind of tool was a good tip, because it gives you some insight into their understanding.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, and you can actually see the visualizations that Power BI uses, so that is somewhat built into it. Yes, and the last point, which is more about balance, is to keep it simple. Try to avoid too much information. Try to stay focused and include the information you want on the page.

Frode Stenstrøm: Absolutely.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, the third point in our design principles

Frode Stenstrøm: Here I have to—oh, I'm not following along, you know, I'm completely caught off guard.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, focus attention where you want it. This involves using certain elements. We can direct the audience's focus to where you want it without them realizing that their attention is actually focused there. There is a concept called pre-attentive attributes, and if we use text size, line length, line width, or any of the elements we can now see on the screen correctly, people will look at them first without thinking about it. For example, in the first box, it is the longest line.

So yes, without... thinking about it, that's what we notice first. And that also applies to width or direction or something like that.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, we humans often notice the deviations.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, yes, so we should use that as Power BI Report designers too. So if we use larger text, for example for the title, there must be a reason for the text size.

So don't just use different sizes simply because you want it that way; you need to have a reason for doing so. Yes, that was very brief.

Frode Stenstrøm: But what we're talking about right now is precisely the key point: we want to focus on a few things in a report, and there are some simple tricks you can use to make those figures stand out first.

Yuliia Kamkova: And perhaps the last tip I would give is to remember that when people look at a report, their eyes follow a Z-shaped pattern. So we start at—this is going to be a little difficult to explain—the top left, move to the top right, and then continue in a Z shape. So when you position elements, keep that in mind as well. Think about how people are going to read your report.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, but it’s the same if you think about a regular website that is trying to convert people into clicking ‘Contact’: you read from left to right. Yes. Not from top to bottom—that’s how we do it, at least in our part of the world.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, it’s actually important to... But I think all these design principles apply to all UX design, actually.

We need a little white space from that, right? Yes, okay.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, so the last thing you talked about was the use of color, typography, and text.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, and as I mentioned, this actually concerns Power BI themes. In Power BI, we can change the theme to determine which colors will be most prominent in our report. We can also look at the text and the overall appearance of the page.

And there are lots of Power BI themes—there are already 25 here for you to choose from. And up here, there is also a link to the Microsoft website.

Frode Stenstrøm: You were going to show that too, weren't you?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, I’m going to show that

Frode Stenstrøm: There it is.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so there are lots and lots of Power BI topics here, 33 pages

Frode Stenstrøm: But perhaps the most important thing is for companies to create their own standard template that they can use for all their reports.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, if you're just starting a report and you know you have to use that color, then it might be easier to check whether one already exists. The good thing about it is that it's not just the colors—all the visualizations are also adapted to that theme. So you can customize it too. If you'd like to see, perhaps we can just use this as an example.

We can see whether we want a title on the axis here, whether we want it centered, or here it is on the left-hand side. So you can customize every single element in the theme. So that's pretty cool.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, because that was what was a bit new to me when I saw all the reports you created—how far you can take it. I’m not saying you should go that far, but you can actually customize every single design element.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, but it is also very practical to spend a little more time on the theme. The entire report and its different pages will look very similar and fit together. That way, they are cohesive. So I think it pays off to spend time at the beginning creating a theme.

Frode Stenstrøm: And the great thing about it is that once you've done it, you can reuse a lot of it internally within your company.

Yuliia Kamkova: Exactly.

Frode Stenstrøm: And if you're completely stuck, you can ask the expert here, and she'll sort it out for you. And I know I gave you a challenge, because we have our design handbook, and you created some fun themes based on it, and you have to be pretty good at it to understand those exact things. But we went a little further, and there you saw that you had something called Complete Guide to Power BI Teams.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, it was very useful on the website, which I found not too long ago. So, because when we have it... Yes, it's a theme. We have colors, but what do those colors represent? Color 1, color 2, color 3? I personally found that very confusing, because you think, okay, maybe color 1 is the color that will be used as the background, for example. But that's not true.

So, on that website there is a PDF file that explains very clearly what these colors actually represent, including this palette here. So, if you have time, I recommend reading up on it if you are going to create a Power BI theme, because it makes life much easier.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, that was it.

But I’m familiar with that, because I’ve tried a few times to create that kind of team in Power BI.

And just as you say, color 1—what does that mean? What are the primary and secondary colors? This is a really good visualization of that.

Yuliia Kamkova: Let's go

Frode Stenstrøm: moving on a bit, and I'm the producer here, so I'm running a little behind today... Let's see.

Wrong camera. There we go. There, a website with a Power BI theme, and now we'll go through a few points here.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so now we're fully into the Power BI theme. So, okay, we can choose colors, but what if we change these visual elements? I have a few websites that I think might be interesting to look at.

Frode Stenstrøm: And there are three of them in total, aren't there?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, that's correct.

Frode Stenstrøm: If you like, we can just go through the three of them first, and then they can briefly explain what each one was, and we'll show it afterwards.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so the first website is a very interesting website because it can help us find these colors. Because we have eight colors, and there were also three colors. So that website is like a magic tool for finding the colors of anything.

We'll look at a short demo later. The second website helps you find colors for the theme. But if we want to change the visualizations, there are two other websites after that. One is free, and you can customize the theme there. It's very useful for every single element, the colors, and everything else. But it's a little less user-friendly than the last one. The last one isn't free, though.

Then you have to pay around 30 kroner per month. But it is much easier to use. We’ll take a closer look.

Frode Stenstrøm: But then you show those pages?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes. Yes, so that was the first one. Then Team Generator. It helps us with colors. So if, for example, we change that color like this, we can see that it is color number four, and it changes. But first, we need to figure out which color to use.

And here, there was a very interesting click. So if we—because I know we have a color guide—but let's just imagine, okay, that we don't have one, and we simply go to our website, prosesspilotene.no, and take a screenshot of it. Yes, okay, I already have it, so I'm cheating a little. So if we upload it. Cool! And we have a color palette, right, and then we can apply it, and if we had it on dark

Frode Stenstrøm: That was really clever!

Yuliia Kamkova: Ta-da! And we have all the colors with hash codes.

Frode Stenstrøm: Wasn't that cool of you? That's absolutely awesome!

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, I think it's completely... Yes, you don't have to think about it, and it's also in the same order as we had in Power BI. 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, and the background colors too.

Frode Stenstrøm: Then you can immediately see what it will look like, so you can make adjustments.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, and you can download the JSON

Frode Stenstrøm: And this was free, then?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, yes!

Frode Stenstrøm: Fantastic! Great tip!

Yuliia Kamkova: Magic, so we can also make it Colorful Sunset, or...

Frode Stenstrøm: Everyone wants their products to have a touch of AI these days, but then again, there’s hardly a product without it.

Yuliia Kamkova: But I think it’s great if you have a website or something like that whose look you want to adapt Power BI to.

So I think, yes, we can use that too.

Frode Stenstrøm: Trending—is that the colors that are used the most, or what? I saw that and got curious, yeah. Set colors on course and upload image and trending.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, trending. Yes, I think those are the colors that are very popular right now. Yes, that was the first one. What is...

Frode Stenstrøm: So, are you going to show the app themes next?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so what do we have here? We can create a theme with colors, but we can't change the font here. We can't change visualizations, so if we want to look at visualizations or change them, we'll want to use that website. So there's also Theme Generator—a very creative name—but here we can see different elements, and for each individual element we can customize everything: whether we want to show the legend or not, whether it should appear at the top or at the bottom. So you need to be quite familiar with Power BI Desktop to make changes here, because there's a lot of information.

Frode Stenstrøm: I see that, as you said earlier, you can customize virtually everything

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, yes, but at the same time, I feel it's a bit too much because you need to know every single element, and there are so many things you can customize here. So for me, it's a bit overwhelming when I look at it, and you also don't know what it's going to look like if you change something. So that's where the last website, which I like best, comes in.

Frode Stenstrøm: themes.powerbi.tips/themes yes

Yuliia Kamkova: Uh, if we come and take a look at it.

Just a second.

Yes, just lock it. Pick it up, and we'll film.

Frode Stenstrøm: There you have it, yes.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes.

Frode Stenstrøm: But this was a commercial product, didn't you say it was?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, it has a free version, but it can't do very much. So it's worth paying 30 kroner.

Frode Stenstrøm: 30 kroner, but it saves you a lot of money.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so for example, if you choose colors and then customize one of them so that they look exactly like they do in Power BI, it’s even easier.

So if we, yes, let's change it, for example. So when you change something, it will also change immediately on, yes,

Yes, it will change there immediately

Frode Stenstrøm: You see changes immediately, so you understand what you're doing

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, exactly. So I feel that it is much easier to use because when you change something, you can see what you are changing and what it will look like in that report and

Frode Stenstrøm: This is your favorite, but what do you do once you've made a change like that, or are you going to show us later how to get it into Power BI?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, we'll take a look at that. That was just the introduction.

Frode Stenstrøm: I'm just eager.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, but there are so many links now, so I understand.

Frode Stenstrøm: But of the three tools we were just talking about—we were talking about this team, those three tools—the last one was the one you liked best, right? Or do you use them differently and mix things up a bit?

Yuliia Kamkova: I think I mix them, because sometimes ... if I just need to find colors that work better together, then I'll use the first one. Just to visualize it. I don't use the second one that much. I used the third one specifically for today. So it's good. Everyone is different.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, but I’ve noticed that something has changed, because I checked out this market about a year and a half ago, and back then I only found one such generator. I think many of these tools are quite new. Unless I just didn’t find them.

Yuliia Kamkova: But it happens all the time.

I also include some websites I found while preparing for it.

Frode Stenstrøm: That's great.

So, those of you at home have now received a few tips, if you’d like to summarize what we’ve discussed. I’m just going back a little in our presentation now. We said we would take a look at these design principles, and we’ve talked about context and target audience.

We’ve talked about layout and balance, and about using design elements to create focus. We’ve also talked about color and typography, and so on. So we’ve covered that part. I know you have something to say about color palettes.

Yuliia Kamkova: Oh, that too.

Frode Stenstrøm: Then I have to put it that way.

Yuliia Kamkova: I don't think we'll go through every page, because it takes too much time, but another tip for finding colors is to use websites specifically designed for finding colors.

So if you have a color that you know you have to use, how do you find the other seven colors? You can use various websites. The first one can generate a palette for you based on a color. The second is Adobe's standard... Color wheel, which I think has been around for a long time, so people may be familiar with it.

But what’s nice here is that you can also create palettes for people with different designs, or palettes that are a bit more pastel, or something like that. And if you already have three or four colors, you can also add more colors.

Frode Stenstrøm: But I’d like to say one thing about that, because we do need to take accessibility into account.

And if you have red-green color blindness, you can't exactly use red and green in the report to highlight the differences between things. For example, we've made extensive use of Adobe's tools for choosing colors when creating websites for people.

Yuliia Kamkova: And the third website, Palette by Susilu, is also really useful.

If you choose Palette, you can select people with different conditions and see how they will perceive these colors, what the contrast will look like, and everything else. So it’s useful to check at the end that the report looks good.

Frode Stenstrøm: I would say that is very, very useful. But then, well, now we've gone through the demonstration, and you've shown us a lot in a short time. We haven't been at it for more than fifteen minutes—no, actually, we've been at it for 45 minutes.

No, sorry, we’ve been at it for half an hour. But we’ve gone through all the basic design elements and such. How do you work?

Yuliia Kamkova: How do I work? Hard.

Frode Stenstrøm: So you'll do the demo case first again, then.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, we're going to look at a demo case. We've taken a sample report from the Microsoft website, and it... It's a fictional report created by a company called Obvience, featuring a fictional company that manufactures a product called Van Ardskjell.

And we're going to look at the sales report, and since we've already spent so much time, we're just going to customize one page of that report, which is the year-to-date category trend analysis.

Frode Stenstrøm: Right. And the first thing you mention—you've called it the initial cleanup?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so ...

Frode Stenstrøm: Then I'll show your screen.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes.

So that's what the report looks like.

Yes, what is your first impression of that report?

Frode Stenstrøm: I actually thought there was a great deal of information.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, it is.

Frode Stenstrøm: I think you have a large map there with some dots on it, but I can't really make much sense of it without looking into it more closely. I can see that there are some trend lines there that I can understand if I look closely enough..

But there was a lot to click on here.

Yuliia Kamkova: And I completely agree. I think there are too many colors, especially here. There's something going on with the color palette.

And as for the map, I completely agree that it may not provide that much information. So if we need to look at it, perhaps we can examine it in a little more detail. My first suggestion would therefore be to remove it from the report and turn it into two tips. That would save us some space in the report, and we could also look at it if needed.

So that's what we'll do. Just press Ctrl-X, and we'll add a new page, which is going to be a little tricky. We'll make it into two tips.

It says tooltip, and we'll have it like this, and yes, yes, it'll be here, and we can rename it.

Frode Stenstrøm: So you're taking—you’re moving a large design element that was on the page into a small thing that pops up when you hover over something, is that right?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes.

And what should we point to? I see that here it is actually manufacture and region.

So that means we have also talked about region, and that actually applies to the map as well. So the tooltip can remain for that visualization. But I would like to avoid so many colors here, and also, if we click on it, we can see that the map is on the fourth row, which I don't really like using. And I would like to change it to—what is it called in Norwegian?

Frode Stenstrøm: Stacked horizontal bar chart.

Yuliia Kamkova: Bar chart, yes. So yes, we're going to do that. And we're going to create it as a tooltip here, so we're going to turn the tools into tooltips. So now, when we look at it, we're going to look at...

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, it becomes so much clearer. First of all, we can immediately see whether or not...

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, manufacturer, and what's happening in that region. But also, yes, now that we're looking at it, you had trouble seeing what that report is about, right, so you were like, what's going on here? So maybe we should change the titles as well. But before we do that, what I like to do is actually resize the page. Because, yes, it's 16 by 9, that's the standard aspect ratio, so if we do that, but use 900 by...

It will have the same aspect ratio, but we'll have much more space, and it will look much better. Because now, for example, we can see that all the months are displayed diagonally. And research has shown that people take 65 percent longer to read information rotated by 45 degrees. So when we have more space, we can actually make it a little wider, and then we'll avoid that issue.

Yes, we'll make sure to keep that, because it was Oppvendt that created the data, and it's important to credit them. Yes, I also think that for these, we have a lot about manufacturer, region, manufacturer, months, manufacturer, so perhaps we're interested in different manufacturers, in which case I think it could be useful to have—oh no, remove the layer.

It is useful to have a slicer for manufacturer, because I can see that all these reports concern different manufacturers in different regions. So, for that, I just want to add a slicer visual, which is now a tile slicer. In the latest version of Power BI, we have two new slicers: one is a tile slicer and the other is a list slicer. Previously, there was only the new slicer.

Many people wonder why Power BI has done that, but that is not the topic of this webinar. So yes, manufacturer—we're going to have... different manufacturers, and I like to display it as a column. If we do that, we have the columns. So now we've tidied things up a bit. I think it makes a difference. I don't like too many colors, but that's my personal opinion.

But now that report is a little easier to look at. But what are we going to do with it? That was just the first step. We're going to adapt it to the company's colors. That was the goal of this webinar. So I thought, okay, Obvience created that report, so we're going to adapt it to the Obvience website. What do you think?

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, that's good.

That's great. I'm sitting here looking at my notes, but yes, you're totally... You're ahead of me.

Yuliia Kamkova: Okay, great.

We're on the same page. Now we're going to look at Obvience's website. So yes, they work with generative AI and business intelligence, and they've created lots of reports. Okay, so, what can we see here? They use orange. Orange,

Frode Stenstrøm: yes, and blue.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, blue, and then the yellow one here. But it’s a little difficult to figure out which hashtag to use here. So here’s a trick from... I found the website notjusteaprettydashboard.com. We’ll take a look at it later.

Frode Stenstrøm: notjustaprettydashboard.com

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so if we go to Explore, this is the CCS overview

Frode Stenstrøm: The stylesheet, yes.

Yuliia Kamkova: And we capture it, and here, ta-da! We have all the hex codes for these colors, which is pretty cool and easy. They also provide information about contrast issues, so I actually don't think they have given it much thought, because it looks like the contrast isn't the best. But it also gives us information about which font they use and the font size. I think that's very useful if you don't already have the design manual and only have the website. I think that works well.

Frode Stenstrøm: 100%

Yuliia Kamkova: But we can also use that bib thing that I showed earlier, so it's a bit

Frode Stenstrøm: Then you can test your website afterwards to see whether you have any contrast issues, or whether there is anything we can do to fix your website as well.

Just contact us. But that was cool, because then you got the colors you need to use in Power BI.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so I think it was very easy to get these hashtags. We can move on to the next page.

Frode Stenstrøm: So that's the one?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes. Yes, so that was it, not just a pretty dashboard. And that website also has lots of different... useful hacks for creating Power BI reports, so if you have time, go there and explore a little. But yes, that was more or less what I look at when I view the website. I look at the logo, yes, that was more or less it. But yes, I just noticed that they use gradients quite a lot; almost every element has a gradient. I also took a screenshot of these colors, and yes, they use these round elements. I also took a screenshot of these hashtags that we got from the live hack.

yes,

So now orange—I think it is quite clearly the main color on that website. So, moving on, I used one of the websites I knew to find colors, and I made that the main color. Then I got a natural palette and triads to add a few more colors, because we need eight colors, or eleven including the emotion colors. Yes, so that was my approach to doing it.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, but what you're doing is describing your process from the outset. For any given client, you identify which colors they use, and then select the primary colors. You map them out like you did here, then move on to create the color palette and use the tools we looked at earlier. And then you have a color palette.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, and we can see that color number two and color number three aren't shown here, but those are the colors we took from the website. Exactly. Because they were also identified. Yes, and there's black and white as well. Yes. So, moving on. Once I've created that palette, what I'm actually trying to show is whether it works for people who, for example—okay, we don't have any visual impairments, but we might print it out in grayscale, I don't know.

Frode Stenstrøm: Right, but you're essentially testing the color palette to see whether it works in grayscale and for people with different types of visual impairments before you start creating them. That's really smart.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, and I can see that perhaps these colors weren't the best, because you can see that two of the colors look exactly the same, so I adjusted the palette a bit more.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, so then you went back and corrected it, and then tested it again; you found something that actually worked.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so if we move on, I used the Adobe Color Wheel, and I found some more colors with a little more contrast, which makes the palette look a little better. It will always be more difficult to find the best colors that look good in grayscale because, well, you have far fewer options, but it may be worth spending some time on it.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, but I think that's what we're learning from you now—your process of picking colors from the websites, testing them in different scenarios, and perhaps making adjustments until you have a color palette that supports universal design. That's really cool, but I guess the next step—let me guess—is that we actually change the theme and do it in real life.

Yuliia Kamkova: Okay, so we're going to show it. Okay, so it's the same report, but I've also created a category slicer. It looks the same as before, and from what I can see on Obvience's website, they use a dark theme. The first thing I like to do is add a background, because right now it's white, and it's quite difficult to group things. So the best practice is to use PowerPoint, Figma, or something else, but I'm going to show how I do it with PowerPoint.

So what I usually do is just take a screenshot and copy it, and then I copy it and open PowerPoint. Please, come here. Okay, then we've removed that, removed that, and here. Okay. And... How is that better than creating... because it's also possible to...

Create elements like these as just shapes here, and we can create everything by drawing it in PowerPoint, but the problem is that it will take a lot of time, and it puts a strain on the report. If you just have it as a screenshot that will serve as the background, the report will be much faster, so loading every single element will take much longer than loading a background image. It is very

Frode Stenstrøm: That's an amazing trick

Yuliia Kamkova: is like best practical practice, yes, we're back here, okay, so what are we going to do? We're going to make it transparent. Yes, that's how it is now.

And then we'll do the same as that one. So I think it's good to have it something like that. It's also good...

Frode Stenstrøm: So you add the design element you need to the report as a background element from PowerPoint.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so then we use some of that attention... Yes,

Frode Stenstrøm: you correct something so that...

Yuliia Kamkova: Because I group elements together, they’re going to be a little...

The report will look a little nicer and a little cleaner.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, but I understand your process, because then you take the elements you create, add a background element, and then set it. Yes. Yes.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, and then it will take shape. Maybe I can... It will show... I'm cheating a little, so I'm going to show how I made it from...

Beforehand. Because, yes, it saves time and everything. So I've also created these circles around the text, because if we prepare the text in advance, that will make things quicker too. Since we know which report we're going to create the design for. So yes, and then I thought, okay, the Obvience website is actually quite dark, so maybe a dark theme would work a little better.

Frode Stenstrøm: Now I understand why you use PowerPoint, because then you can simply copy and paste this from the PowerPoint as a background image into the PowerPoint report.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, and then add a bit of a Shadows gradient too, and it immediately looks a little cooler.

Frode Stenstrøm: You take a really boring report—sorry—and make it good.

Yuliia Kamkova: Thanks. Okay, now we're happy with it.

We can choose File, Save As, Save a Copy here, and we'll save it as SVG, Scalable Vector Graphics format.

Frode Stenstrøm: Then it will be an SVG file, yes.

Then they go pretty fast.

Yes, you've made it before, after all.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, but we'll create it again just for the sake of the demo. Okay, save. And we'll just use that slide. So when we're back in that report, we'll go to the background.

Frode Stenstrøm: So for the background, you select that file?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, that was the one. Open it, and we'll

adapt it. Yes, so we'll remove

Frode Stenstrøm: Then you remove the title, since you already have it included.

You move those boxes into it. Yes, that thing with the good design tips—I had no idea that was possible. It went from being a fairly amateurish report to suddenly looking absolutely stunning.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, it’s a bit more stylish. But now it looks like none of these colors go together at all. No, they don’t.

Frode Stenstrøm: What do you do then?

Yuliia Kamkova: We go to View, and here is the theme option we talked about earlier. And we can see if there’s a theme that might work. Maybe the dark theme?

Frode Stenstrøm: Not quite.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, and this is where the websites I showed at the beginning come into play.

So how do you do that? All these themes are actually JSON files. So if, for example, we

Frode Stenstrøm: So

If you had created a theme using one of the other generators, you could import it now—is that what you're doing?

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so the first thing we can do is simply set suitable colors. Then we look at the custom settings and just select colors that we have chosen before.

But, and when we use it, I can—we're going to cheat a little, aren't we?

Frode Stenstrøm: No, but it’s not really cheating—you created the colors with these people

Yuliia Kamkova: So if you're happy with it, you can always save that theme, but I'll use the one I created earlier. The files have been created, okay, and if we look at the colors now, they are exactly the colors we selected earlier. But what do we see here? The background is white, so it doesn't work, and because of that, we can't see the names of all these reports. So it doesn't work very well if we just change the colors directly here, which is where these websites come in.

So if we go back to Power BI Tips, under My Files, there was the Obvience theme that I created earlier. So if we edit it and go to Properties, we can see that, for example, the first thing I like to do is remove the background and also set it to the yellow color we want to use, as well as the orange color we want to use. That way, we can customize all the elements we want, and when we're happy with it, we simply download the theme file and save it like that. It will be called Obvience.json, with lots of things, under Documents. Okay, yes, so now we have it.

Frode Stenstrøm: then you've saved it in the theme, and then you just import it into Power BI

Yuliia Kamkova: yes, and if we look at that JSON file, it is actually a very simple JSON file, and it has data colors, so these are the colors we have selected, and show access, as well as show background, so if you are very

into it, you can write it in JSON.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, but I don't think that will be particularly relevant, so at least it won't be much fun to do.

Yuliia Kamkova: But some people like to do it that way, so it’s somewhat up to the individual. Yes, so if we go back to that file now, I think I’m going to show my final result. So we’ve created this theme here, and yes, it looks much better, and when we look at each category, we can look at each...

In the United States, how it's going. So of course there would have been more, but I've also actually removed all the colors and kept only the orange one that corresponds to the van-artskjelle.

Frode Stenstrøm: There’s a huge difference compared to the report you started with. Could you just bring up the one you started with?

Yuliia Kamkova: Just a minute. Maybe we can take a look at it.

No, it's... You have it here

Frode Stenstrøm: in Power BI Desktop, I think.

Yuliia Kamkova: We changed it. No, that was it. But just give me a second. We're going to take a look at it.

I also want to show that difference.

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, the difference there between taking a fairly straightforward report and then applying the tricks you've just used. And I thought we should summarize that a little as well.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so the goal was actually to show that we haven't done anything in Power BI in terms of calculations or DAX formulas, or used any very advanced visualizations, but only worked with the design. We took the existing report, which looked like this.

Frode Stenstrøm: Because this is what we started with—a straightforward report from Microsoft called the Sales and Marketing Sample.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, and it shows the same information as this report.

Frode Stenstrøm: What do you viewers at home think? Which one did you think was best? I know which one I prefer. I think there were a lot of good tricks here, both creating themes with those theme generators and using PowerPoint to create a background so that it became an element. The title actually looked much better now.

Fantastic. That was fun. But you were going to show us more, weren't you?

Yuliia Kamkova: No, that was it.

Frode Stenstrøm: That was it?

Yuliia Kamkova: Ah, publish.

Yes, sorry.

Frode Stenstrøm: When you prepare the report, people need to be able to access it.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, and we do that by publishing. Do you want to create it now? Yes. And then we move on to Fabric. I've already created the webinar workspace, so we'll select it.

And when we publish it, we'll get a link that we can then share with other people. So if these people are part of your workspace or the same organization, you can go to Microsoft Fabric and view the same report together, leave comments, or communicate. I talked a little more about this in the previous webinar, so people know what to do with it.

Frode Stenstrøm: But we've talked a little about publishing and sharing, so I thought it was time to summarize some of what we've discussed. We've looked at the design elements and how you can use them and choose the right ones. You covered color choices and tips and tricks for extracting colors and creating themes. I thought it was pretty cool to use PowerPoint to create background elements.

It doesn't cost anything, but it completely transforms the visuals.

Yuliia Kamkova: This is the first time I’ve seen it, and I’m just like, “Ah, so easy!”

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, but it’s free. You just have to do it.

Yuliia Kamkova: But you have to pay for it, though everyone has something like PowerPoint

Frode Stenstrøm: Yes, almost everyone has an Office license, and you can really use any drawing tool.

So, I think we should briefly summarize what we’ve talked about today.

Yuliia Kamkova: Yes, so we have gone through design principles and the theory behind them, and then I showed a short demo where I took a standard sales report and adapted the color palette to the company that created the report. We have also talked about visual elements and how it is actually better to prepare them in advance, in PowerPoint, for example.

You can also add a logo, such as Obvience or something similar, in PowerPoint. We also demonstrated interactive visualizations, such as tooltips and slicers for filtering elements. Finally, we showed how to publish and share the report with others.

Frode Stenstrøm: And last but not least, you have included a whole host of links in this webinar (see above the transcript).

Useful tools for designing Power BI reports:

Tools for layout and balancehttps://www.figma.com/https://app.mokkup.ai/screen/68505Creating a Power BI themehttps://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Themes-Gallery/bd-p/ThemesGalleryColors and text in a Power BI themehttps://www.numerro.io/guides/power-bi-themesOther websites for creating Power BI themeshttps://powerbithemegenerator.bibb.pro/https://themegenerator.point-gmbh.com/en/visuals/Line Charthttps://themes.powerbi.tips/themesColor palettesColorspace - https://mycolor.space/?hex=%2369C7D5&sub=1Adobehttps://color.adobe.com/nb/create/color-wheelViz Palette (susielu.com)https://projects.susielu.com/viz-paletteMicrosoft sales and marketing example for Power BIhttps://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/sample-sales-and-marketingContact us if you would like help with your Power BI reports!