Yes, there's plenty of great reads, e.g., Storytelling with Data.
At a high-level, I emphasize the following to my direct reports & clients:
As far as the 3d graphs are concerned, practically any textbook on data viz will tell you to never use 3d except very rate, very specific circumstances.
In reality, there's only a handful of plot types you need to know and use: two types of barplots, scatter plots, histograms, box plots, line plots and maybe waterfall plots as well. Using rare and obscure plot types is counter-productive since it will take your viewer too long and too much effort to understand what's happening. Viz, on the other hand has to make information quick and easy to digest.
There are a lot of very technical viz textbooks but I'd recommend something like Storytelling With Data: https://www.amazon.com.au/Storytelling-Data-Visualization-Business-Professionals/dp/1119002257?ref_=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=5c7aab16-3417-4f0c-af20-494767b8c35d.
It's less technical bit still great and teaches a lot.
Storytelling with Data is the best book I've read on this topic. I have about five currently in my personal library and this is the only one I recommend to coworkers anymore.
This is a great book on it. Used in college and still apply a lot from it today in my role. All about what gets the point across the fastest for your audience.
Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119002257/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_NE2EE7DM5GYRN065VPEW
This is a great book on it. Used in college and still apply a lot from it today in my role. All about what gets the point across the fastest for your audience.
Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119002257/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_NE2EE7DM5GYRN065VPEW
Do the extra colors actually add meaning to the charts?
People are quite bad at tracing categories by color in a complex chart, especially if they have to keep looking back and forth at a long legend. In almost all cases, you can simplify the chart to use only one or two colors (e.g. "our company" and "all competitors"), plus appropriate textual labels.
See "storytelling with data"by Knaflic for examples.
I teach an undergrad and grad course in a business college after spending 25 years in industry. I believe in practical experience and less theoretical/math/programming for business students. While I have students use Tableau for the assignments and projects, this book has lots of great material to lecture on
Storytelling with Data: A Data... https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119002257?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
Don’t know of anyone who can help you, but Storytelling with data is a great book to learn from.
I can’t recommend highly enough 3 books on good visualizations in business (and everywhere else)
Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals buy this, use this
Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten (the gold-standard usable textbook)
Report format for abstract/methods/etc vs PowerPoint for salespeople varies dramatically from company to company, so I don’t have any good recommendations there. But in the “a picture is worth a thousand words” world, visualizations really matter.
Here's a book on data visualization by Cole Nussbaumer: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1119002257
I have read it myself and found it helpful on how to illustrate and emphasize certain data.
You can't have googled very hard. The book, and it's accompanying workbook are classics used in many classes.
https://www.amazon.com/Storytelling-Data-Visualization-Business-Professionals/dp/1119002257
I really enjoyed Statistics for Data Science and Business Analysis because it's so entry level.
I would ask the folks in r/datanalysis for advice on formatting your resume. I'm a newbie like you. Just make sure there's a place on your resume for projects and include anything relevant.
My "flagship" projects were automations and building proficiency in Cognos Analytics. I also prepared example dashboards to show data reporting skills. Here's a great book on designing dashboards and communicating data.
Below are two great books on the topic of information design:
Funny you mention the Economist, since the graphs featured there are often made with ggplot2 in R. I would spend some time learning it because I have simply not found any better tool than R and ggplot to make good graphs. It gives you so much control of every feature that it is impossible to replicate, even in Python IMO.
However, it seems you're in a hurry. I'd say that you can improve Excel's quality by right clicking the feature you want to change and going to the options screen that pops up to the right of your screen. If you wrangle with it enough, I'd say it's possible to make decent graphs. I made this one yesterday and I think it is decent considering the small amount of time it took me.
There's tons of resources out there which tell you how to best edit graphs in Excel. I think the Excel bible has good stuff on this, as well as videos on how to create McKinsey graphs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-cJj9S4e2c). Further, you could check out books like the following:
https://www.amazon.com/Meaningful-Graphs-Converting-Informative-Charts/dp/0986054909
In the long run, you'll find it easier if you learn R, Python, Stata, Power BI, Tableau and other software with steeper learning curves. I also find pgfplots in LaTeX as a great, beautiful chart generator. DM me if you'd like some feedback on your graphs.
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Category-wise subreddits for Amazon Deals:
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Highly recommend this book https://www.amazon.com.br/dp/1119002257/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_i_A222HZ5RJZNS1AR1CA6A
I've attended Cole's 1-day workshop and definitely recommend it to any business who needs to summarize the so-what of their data. The book is good too.
http://www.storytellingwithdata.com/public-workshops/
https://www.amazon.com/Storytelling-Data-Visualization-Business-Professionals/dp/1119002257