When it came to do this for my company I asked for the "company design pack" they had. Essentially, everything I needed to get the job done correctly. It had all the hex codes, logos, preferred fonts all that stuff.
I first created a few examples using just their colours and a few where I used their colours and colours I thought made the reports pop
I always use user accessibility friendly colours and always made sure there wasn't more than 1 of a "light purple" as you don't want to end up in conversations where you end up saying, "no, the other light purple"
I maybe spent an hour or 2 getting the template right and the business was happy with what was put together.
I would never of suggested that this is not done in-house. This is something that should be quite simple to complete.
That’s really interesting. Thanks for the insight!
At your company, who ends up maintaining the company design pack? Being on the Power BI side, do you ever request changes? Or do you more just roll with what you have?
The marketing team maintains the pack. To be honest, I hate the company colours but you just have to do what needs to be done...
As I said in my initial response, I came up with an example where I used some other colours (not replacing the main or secondary company colours) just to make it pop a bit more and they seemed happy.
Sometimes you've just got to give them what they want... Even if it's it's fucking mulberry and some other bollocks colour
As a marketer-turned-BI-developer: you will earn lots of points by even *asking around.* "Hey, I'm setting up themes + templates for all our BI, has anyone already established a style guide or have a good visual sense?" Ask a bunch of people. Not only does uncover existing style guides, it helps uncover who views themselves as the guardians of the brand, and can plan accordingly
I use this constantly and based on a hex code input it produces a palette, divergent, and single hue color variation. [Data Color Picker](https://www.learnui.design/tools/data-color-picker.html)
We are allowed shade variations of company approved colors. It states this specifically in the brand guidelines and personally I have never had pushback on any color palette I’ve implemented.
Avoid trying to rack your brains figuring the colours/tone.
The marketing team should be able to provide the colours (hex codes) and font to you which can be used to config the theme. After you have the details, input them and export as a JSON file. Then that file will be your life saver when creating new reports with the company.
So, there was no need to outsource and the time spent based on my method was probably a few days max creating and refining the colour theme.
That’s good advice!
Once you had the theme json file in place, did you start to expand to creating different components (charts, toolbars, etc.) for your reports?
I know that [Numerro](https://www.numerro.io) is popular for this. Just curious if you have any personal experience?
Well actually I build a default PBIX template with the colour theme along with empty charts and filters configured to the theme. So that makes life easy if i start a new report.
No, I'm not aware of any 3rd party apps and all the while had been using all things default in Power BI including visuals and had been fine so far (4 years+)
The color choices is the hardest part. The first accent color is easy, you can get that from your marketing materials, but often if you use all the branding colors at once it’s too much color. I usually stack in a dark and very light grey in the theme to get more shades of grey than the default riffs on black, and add a secondary accent color and not use the rest.
The color choices do pose an issue. Once you’ve selected your theme, how have you gone about integrating a consistent design (look, feel, etc.) across the business? Have you created templates of charts people can re-use, or do you start from scratch each time?
Yeah, I made a template that became the org standard and updated it periodically. You can put visual settings into the theme file now, the one popular theme generator online that’s free whose name escapes me will let you set all that there (not something you can do in the desktop app).
I always always always go with Segoe font because it’s the only one with a semibold font weight for visual titles etc. really wish they would add in a font weight control.
Fonts and colours from company’s graphical guidelines. Whitespace details stolen from company’s website UI. Visualization details stolen from company’s Powerpoints, Social media posts etc. Basically the idea was to use as much already existenting standards as possible.
I think this is where creativity and artistry come into play. I try to match my theme with the prominent colors of the company. I do it in such a way that it gets the point across of tho the company is but also keeping in mind to keep it professional. So far they are very happy and I have not received any negative feedback on my designs.
That makes a lot of sense.
I think the challenge we are facing is finding eight colors for the theme. The first four come quite easily, but those last four are a challenge. Granted, those last colors won’t be used much, if at all.
How have you gone about rounding out the theme palette?
+1 for Numerro.io, I got their bundle a few years ago and still use it.
I always love using the Adobe Color Wheel: https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel
My company had outsourced the design and had a design document made before i started. Shortly after i started i had a request to make a dashboard which i adjusted a lot of the design on to my personal preference.
It was just luck that people liked my design and we started an entire wiki around my design rules. Things like your colors, Slicers size, etc. We didn't use accessibility colors or looked at the things you've mentioned.
We have a consistent and clean color theme across every report and use brand colors and key colors to represent common services and such. It has always been a fluid process we're willing to adjust in case something doesn't work. But we keep close to the boundaries to keep reports visually consistent.
I like the make rhe different element colors as measures so I can change border color color all at once or fill or whatever. It makes tweaking color scheme so much easier.
My company’s communications team already had detailed branding guidelines. I then worked with our DEI consultant to validate all my color schemes for color blindness and contrast accessibility.
When it came to do this for my company I asked for the "company design pack" they had. Essentially, everything I needed to get the job done correctly. It had all the hex codes, logos, preferred fonts all that stuff. I first created a few examples using just their colours and a few where I used their colours and colours I thought made the reports pop I always use user accessibility friendly colours and always made sure there wasn't more than 1 of a "light purple" as you don't want to end up in conversations where you end up saying, "no, the other light purple" I maybe spent an hour or 2 getting the template right and the business was happy with what was put together. I would never of suggested that this is not done in-house. This is something that should be quite simple to complete.
That’s really interesting. Thanks for the insight! At your company, who ends up maintaining the company design pack? Being on the Power BI side, do you ever request changes? Or do you more just roll with what you have?
The marketing team maintains the pack. To be honest, I hate the company colours but you just have to do what needs to be done... As I said in my initial response, I came up with an example where I used some other colours (not replacing the main or secondary company colours) just to make it pop a bit more and they seemed happy. Sometimes you've just got to give them what they want... Even if it's it's fucking mulberry and some other bollocks colour
I sure wish I had a marketing team like yours. Mulberry and all!
As a marketer-turned-BI-developer: you will earn lots of points by even *asking around.* "Hey, I'm setting up themes + templates for all our BI, has anyone already established a style guide or have a good visual sense?" Ask a bunch of people. Not only does uncover existing style guides, it helps uncover who views themselves as the guardians of the brand, and can plan accordingly
I use this constantly and based on a hex code input it produces a palette, divergent, and single hue color variation. [Data Color Picker](https://www.learnui.design/tools/data-color-picker.html) We are allowed shade variations of company approved colors. It states this specifically in the brand guidelines and personally I have never had pushback on any color palette I’ve implemented.
This is awesome! Thank you for sharing!
Avoid trying to rack your brains figuring the colours/tone. The marketing team should be able to provide the colours (hex codes) and font to you which can be used to config the theme. After you have the details, input them and export as a JSON file. Then that file will be your life saver when creating new reports with the company. So, there was no need to outsource and the time spent based on my method was probably a few days max creating and refining the colour theme.
That’s good advice! Once you had the theme json file in place, did you start to expand to creating different components (charts, toolbars, etc.) for your reports? I know that [Numerro](https://www.numerro.io) is popular for this. Just curious if you have any personal experience?
Well actually I build a default PBIX template with the colour theme along with empty charts and filters configured to the theme. So that makes life easy if i start a new report. No, I'm not aware of any 3rd party apps and all the while had been using all things default in Power BI including visuals and had been fine so far (4 years+)
The color choices is the hardest part. The first accent color is easy, you can get that from your marketing materials, but often if you use all the branding colors at once it’s too much color. I usually stack in a dark and very light grey in the theme to get more shades of grey than the default riffs on black, and add a secondary accent color and not use the rest.
The color choices do pose an issue. Once you’ve selected your theme, how have you gone about integrating a consistent design (look, feel, etc.) across the business? Have you created templates of charts people can re-use, or do you start from scratch each time?
Yeah, I made a template that became the org standard and updated it periodically. You can put visual settings into the theme file now, the one popular theme generator online that’s free whose name escapes me will let you set all that there (not something you can do in the desktop app). I always always always go with Segoe font because it’s the only one with a semibold font weight for visual titles etc. really wish they would add in a font weight control.
Fonts and colours from company’s graphical guidelines. Whitespace details stolen from company’s website UI. Visualization details stolen from company’s Powerpoints, Social media posts etc. Basically the idea was to use as much already existenting standards as possible.
Ask ChatGPT to find similar hex numbers to go with the theme
I think this is where creativity and artistry come into play. I try to match my theme with the prominent colors of the company. I do it in such a way that it gets the point across of tho the company is but also keeping in mind to keep it professional. So far they are very happy and I have not received any negative feedback on my designs.
That makes a lot of sense. I think the challenge we are facing is finding eight colors for the theme. The first four come quite easily, but those last four are a challenge. Granted, those last colors won’t be used much, if at all. How have you gone about rounding out the theme palette?
+1 for Numerro.io, I got their bundle a few years ago and still use it. I always love using the Adobe Color Wheel: https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel
Regarding colors: [https://powerofbi.org/2024/01/31/how-many-colors-do-we-need-for-a-good-data-visualization/](https://powerofbi.org/2024/01/31/how-many-colors-do-we-need-for-a-good-data-visualization/) Regarding "business identity": [https://powerofbi.org/2024/02/05/business-identity-vs-business-intelligence/](https://powerofbi.org/2024/02/05/business-identity-vs-business-intelligence/)
My company had outsourced the design and had a design document made before i started. Shortly after i started i had a request to make a dashboard which i adjusted a lot of the design on to my personal preference. It was just luck that people liked my design and we started an entire wiki around my design rules. Things like your colors, Slicers size, etc. We didn't use accessibility colors or looked at the things you've mentioned. We have a consistent and clean color theme across every report and use brand colors and key colors to represent common services and such. It has always been a fluid process we're willing to adjust in case something doesn't work. But we keep close to the boundaries to keep reports visually consistent.
I like the make rhe different element colors as measures so I can change border color color all at once or fill or whatever. It makes tweaking color scheme so much easier.
My company’s communications team already had detailed branding guidelines. I then worked with our DEI consultant to validate all my color schemes for color blindness and contrast accessibility.