The Aesthetics of Spreadsheets

I’ll just say it right at the top - talking about the aesthetics of spreadsheets is a little controversial.

Spreadsheets aren’t meant to be pretty. It’s not that some UX/UI designers haven’t put a LOT of energy into making them “easy on the eyes” and relatively intuitive, but that’s just not their primary focus. Their focus is in functionality, data wrangling, and plain number-crunching prowess. They are the polo shirts and khaki pants of the software world.

Back in the olden days (*gulp* the 80s? 90s?!) you mostly had to accept spreadsheets for what they were, aesthetically speaking, and if you wanted something more, you were a vain, vapid fool who clearly had no business tinkering around with the all-powerful spreadsheet. But over time, features were developed that allowed users to change fonts, borders, colors - not to mention the addition of overlayed charts and images. Now, you can create a whole dashboard on a spreadsheet, complete with a customized color palette.

Some folks will say you’re silly to put unnecessary visual flair into your spreadsheets. But take a look at today’s Etsy spreadsheet template shops, and you’ll find no shortage of folks who happily defy that notion. Spreadsheet beautification is IN (at least for some people).

Ultimately, whether or not to beautify your spreadsheets is a personal choice. I would say that, if making something visually appealing makes it more likely you’re going to use it, then it’s something you should seriously consider doing. Even for the most mundane things I create on-the-fly in Google Sheets, I usually select-all and change the font to my go-to Google font, Raleway. I’m a creature of habit, so it brings me some comfort seeing the same calming font as always.

So whether you’re turning your checkboxes custom colors, updating your grid’s color and style, or downloading a favorite Google font, find the ways you can make your digital tools work better for you, even if it’s just to bring a little joy to your eyeballs. 👀