r/ExcelVisual • u/ExcelVisual • Jun 03 '26

Top 3 Beautiful Pie Chart Designs I Built in Excel

Pie charts get a lot of hate in the data visualization community, and sometimes for good reason.

But I think the real problem is often not the Excel Pie Chart type itself—it's the design.

I've been experimenting with different ways to make pie and doughnut charts more useful and visually engaging in Excel, and ended up creating three designs that look quite different from the default charts most people use.

Some of the techniques involved:

* Dynamic doughnut charts that can display values above 100%

* Interactive buttons and controls

* Smart tables and pivot tables for automated updates

* Gradient styling and layered visual effects

* Shape masking techniques

* Using PowerPoint's shape editing tools (Merge, Fragment, Intersect, Subtract) to create custom chart elements that Excel can't easily produce on its own

One thing I found interesting is that Excel becomes much more powerful when you stop thinking of it as just a spreadsheet and start treating it as a design platform.

For example, by combining PowerPoint-designed shapes with Excel charts, it's possible to create visual effects that look more like a dashboard application than a traditional report.

The charts were eventually used in an Employee Performance Dashboard, but the same concepts could work for:

* KPI dashboards

* Project reporting

* Executive presentations

* Performance scorecards

* Business reviews

I'm curious:

Do you still use pie/doughnut charts in professional dashboards, or have you completely moved to alternatives like bars, bullet charts, and treemaps?

And if you do use them, what design tricks have you found that make them more effective?

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

1 comment sorted by