How to create an annotated column chart with Excel and Canva

In this video I’ll show you step by step how to create a simple infographic. We start with a column chart in Excel (a.k.a. bar graph or bar chart) and then bring it into Canva for annotations.

Video Transcript

Hey data designer! Welcome to my new recipe series.

The goal with this series is to inspire researchers and evaluators to get out of their heads and start creating stuff.

Before we get started, I’m trying to get to one thousand subscribers on YouTube. So if you could hit the subscribe button, like this video, or leave a comment, it would be much appreciated.

Have you ever used the back of a screwdriver to hammer a nail into a wall? I certainly have.

Would it have been easier to use a hammer, yes. But that would require going out to the garage and finding one. The screwdriver works in a pinch.

What’s the point?

The first rule of just creating stuff is to use the tools you have at hand. Or the tools that you are most comfortable using.

And for many of you, the chart building tool that you have at hand and are probably most comfortable using, is Excel.

Today I’m going to walk through the steps of creating a simple annotated column chart.

We’re going to start to create the column chart. Then we’ll move over to Canva for the annotation.

To start I made up a little data table in Excel. I then highlighted the data table and inserted a 2-D column chart.

Just in case you are wondering, it doesn’t really matter if you choose clustered column or stacked column. Since I only have one column of data, it will look the same.

Now that we have the chart, let’s start cleaning it up. This is a preference, but my goal is to strip the chart down to its essence.

This means deleting the grid lines. I also get rid of the y axis values.

Then I get rid of the title. After that I right click and go to format data series.

This is where I can drop down the gap width. Also known as the space between the bars. My preference is usually 25%.

After that I get rid of the random box around the chart by clicking on the full chart and taking away the outline.

And if you prefer not to have an X axis line, this is also removable by choosing the X axis and clicking no outline.

Finally, for any bar that I plan to color in the final infographic. I change the color.

Right now it doesn’t need to be the final color, it just needs to be different than the other bars. You’ll see why in a minute.

After I’ve cleaned everything up to the essentials. I right click and hit save as picture.

Then I want to save it as an SVG. This will give us the most flexibility and best resolution when we work on the image in Canva.

Now I’ll open up canva and create a blank presentation.

I use the standard 16:9 presentation format for a lot of charts and small infographics. It’s just easy. It works well on social media, inside of visual reports and slide docs. And of course, this way it also works well inside of presentations.

Once I have a blank document, I just drag and drop the svg chart I just created in excel.

Okay, now that the chart is in Canva, let’s make a little annotated infographic.

If you click on the chart image inside of Canva, you’ll notice that it came in with 3 colors. The blue (for the bars) the orange (for my highlighted bar), and white (for the background). This lets us switch the colors around as much as possible.

I brought over the x axis category names, but I want to recreate them inside Canva with a different font.

I could go back and redo this in Excel, but since it’s just at the bottom I can also just crop it away inside Canva with a double click on the image.

To add new category names I just use text boxes. There is a keyboard short cut for text in Canva, just hit the T button.

I ended up changing the bar colors to gray with a blue highlight. Boring I know, but a lot of professional stuff ends up on the boring gray blue scale.

Now for placement I like to use a little bit of measurement. And the easiest way to measure is to use grids inside of canva.

I use this three column grid all the time, just so I can get a sense of space.

For this one I’ll keep a margin around the page and just use the two right hand columns for my chart, aligned to the bottom of the page.

Once I have a sense I’ll delete the grid. I can always get it back, but it’s a start.

The first thing to do is create a nice little intro paragraph at the top of the page.

This is your takeaway. You can even bold and match the color of your highlighted bar inside the text.

Next I’ll add a bit of text to use as a kind of sub-heading or for further detail and context.

Then I’ll add a simple annotation box the color of the highlighted bar. Putting in a little line collecting the annotation to the bar.

Since I didn’t include data labels in my original Excel chart, I’ll go ahead and add those now using text boxes.

And really, that’s the trade off between doing this kind of thing in Canva versus Excel. It requires a little more manual work, but you get a lot more control over the design.

Everything looked a little too plain, so I added a rectangle behind the text at the top to separate a bit.

The final touches are really just tweaking things until I like how everything looks. Then making sure I sign it with my name or website.

Then we’ll go ahead and export it as an image. At this point, unless I plan to bring it into another design program, I’ll usually export as a PNG. And that’s it. Here is our final visual.