Looking for groovy ideas for themes/styles for a bunch of professional sheets

[TomPC]

Hi All

Here's a non-codey one for you.

XP/2007

I am about to roll out a group of 5 workbooks and am trying to think of a consistent and eye-catching theme to impress my client.

My standard is

• white background
• titles with navy background and white lettering
• Heading1, Heading 2, Good/Bad standard cell styles
• tables with blue/white alternating rows

Other than a bit of date or number formatting, everything else is as it would be in a new workbook. It looks pretty good to me, but I'm no designer.

Anyone know of any websites or other sources where someone's really gone to town in inventing beautiful looking-spreadsheet themes?

I'm thinking of what WORD can do when you change styleset (Distinctive, Elegant, Fancy etc.)

As we all know, it's not whether the spreadsheet calculates correctly - it's that it looks good that counts !!!

Thanks, as always, dear fellow Excelleers.

Tom

 

[RonB1111]

For your titles with dark background and light printing, check out the gradient fill feature in excel 2007+. Go to format cells (from the ribbon, not from right clicking), on the Fill tab, click the "Fill Effect" box and you'll be able to select 2 fill colors for a single cell with several options on how they "blend" together. To me a darker and lighter shade from the same color column looks best.

Also, try yellow lettering with the navy background (or other dark backgrounds), also try light blue or other light colors for lettering against a dark background. Limited use of italics can help improve the look also. Mixing font styles doesn't look good to me (personal choice), but mixing different font sizes with bold &/or italics in headers can improve the look. If the worksheets are going to be printed and then photocopies made from the prints, test in advance how the prints look on both a color copier and a B&W copier, and then see how color & B&W copies from the prints turn out - you could detect readability problems.

 

[TomPC]

Thanks for that RonB. I do like the idea of gradient fill when the colours are similar. I often find it's hard to get a good look when you use (eg Dark blue filling to White because white letters / dark letters partially disappear.

Thanks again

Tom

 

[xenou]

when I look at the "professional" colors that make up the pivot table design gallery I think you don't need much to surpass even the gurus at microsoft. Find a decent green or red, and the city is yours, friend. I used to steal colors from the templates at the office site, but since 2007 came out it seems we've all gotten off track. The color pallete is abysmal.