I don't agree with everything that Stephen Few says, but I agree with most of it. Shortly after we started using QlikView, I read a few of his books, and they gave me a good foundation. It's a good place to start. And yes, there have been QlikTech webinars and I'm sure other presentations on dashboard design, and they pretty much repeat everything Stephen says. For all I know, he helped write their training materials, or agreed that they could copy everything out of his books. So if you want to impress someone who believes every word he heard in his QlikView training, then you'll want to know what Stephen Few has to say.
As for my own comments...
The purpose of a dashboard is not to impress, but to INFORM. The dashboard should be CLEAN, with no wasted pixels, no design element that doesn't serve a purpose. That color gradient you like so much? Get rid of it and use a white or off white background. Those 3D bars? They're just making the data harder to read. You aren't an artist, and even if you are, you aren't here to make art. You're here to give people the exact information they need, comprehended at a glance, with no distractions. Don't worry, there's beauty in simplicity, so you don't have to turn off the right side of your brain. You just have to use it appropriately.
