For more ideas of what's possible, and a great tool for building these using HTML standards that will work on the boss’s iPad, the Data Driven Documents JavaScript library is a great place to start.
Toward the Future
As visualization moves toward delivery via electronic medium, complex data visualization is increasingly blending into the discipline of user experience design and programming. Business analysts, IT staff and knowledge workers will need more skills designing, building and using fluid, interactive, dynamic visualizations. Fortunately, there are great tools and great groups of people focused on user experience, The potential payoff for the investment is huge: visualizations invite us to explore, understand and decide, not as one-off disposable products, but rather as robust, enduring touchstones that customers and leaders return to for insight, conversation and connection.
Note: For more on visualization fundamentals, a good place to start is Edward Tufte's excellent series beginning with “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.” Also see “Visual Design Fundamentals: A Digital Approach” by Alan Hashimoto.
Ryan Bell is a user interface developer for EffectiveUI, where he gets to employ his passion for building great user experiences and indulge his inner information-design enthusiast.
The chart in step 5 is particularly exceptional, but then the visuals fall apart once he adds area charts. Area chart (and stacked bars) do a poor job at preserving true proportions for all sections except the bottom color and the total.
Overall though, this is a great way to think through visualization design if you don't know where to start.