My #WOW2024 challenge this week, was to recreate this bar chart which displayed the total value in conjunction with the values split by another dimension, in this instance year. It was inspired by Sam Parsons’ film franchises viz.

The viz is built on a single sheet, and only uses 3 fields from the data set, the Order Date the Sub-Category and the Sales value.

Let’s build…

On a new sheet, add Sub-Category to Rows and Sales to Columns and sort by Sales descending. Add Order Date to Colour to build a basic stacked bar chart.

We need to be able to show two bars directly ‘side by side’, but with different properties, so we need to end up with 2 marks cards. The ‘heights’ of the bars need to differ, so we’re going to create a ‘fake axis’ on Rows to help.

Double click into the Rows shelf and manually type MIN(0.5)

Change the mark type to bar. Each bar is now positioned based on it’s specific value (ie not stacked).

To get the bars to be positioned where we want them, apply a Running Total Quick Table Calculation to the Sales pill in the Columns shelf. Then edit the table calculation so that is computes by Year of Order Date only.

Add Sales to the Size shelf, and edit the size to be Fixed and aligned Right. You should now have a stacked bar effect.

Add Sales to Tooltip, then add a Percentage of Total quick table calculation. Edit the calculation so it is computing by Year of Order Date.

Adjust the Tooltip to reference the relevant details (note in the above gif, and my original published version, at some point the labelling went awry and the label was showing the cumulative sales value, and not the value for that year).

So now we’ve managed to build a segmented bar chart in a ‘different way’ by using an axis and the size field. We build on this to get the total bar. As this bar needs to be wider than the segmented bar, double click into the Rows shelf and type MIN(1.5), then from the MIN(1.5) marks card, remove the Order Date field from Colour. We now have 2 bars – 1 segmented and 1 not.

Make the chart dual axis and synchronise the axis, then right click on the right hand axis and move marks to back.

On the Min(0.5) marks card, move Order Date from Colour to Detail. Then on the All marks card, click on the Colour shelf and adjust the colour to suit (I set to #dec7b6) and add a white border.

Adjust the Tooltips on both marks cards so the MIN(1.5) is just showing the Sub-Category and Sales value, while the MIN(0.5) card is showing the Order Date year and % of sales value as well.

Narrow the width of the rows. Hide the right hand and the bottom axis (uncheck show header).

We want to make each pair of bars more distinctive, by providing more space between them. Edit the axis to fix the axis from -0.3 to 1.5.

Now hide the axis, and the Sub-Category column heading (right click label and hide field label for rows). Remove all row/column divider lines, zero lines and gridlines. Set the worksheet background colour (I used #fefaf1). Adjust the colour/style of the Sub-Category labels (I used bold, brown) and align top right.

And ta-dah! this should be your finished viz. My published version is here.

We’re going to building on this in a later challenge (I felt putting it all together in a single challenge might be a bit much), so look out for Part 2 in a few weeks time.

Happy vizzin’!

Donna