With the little graphic design experience that I have, I have some tips and tricks (along with some learning from Andy Kriebel) to offer when building out a dashboard.

The best way I can describe visual aesthetic is through some best practices:

1.) Keep it simple - try to keep unnecessary grid lines and text to a minimum. This will ensure a clean visualization and is less likely to overwhelm the audience.

2.) Choose engaging colors - I tend to use two different sources to choose my colors (along with my general intuition).

One of them being adobe color which helps you identify contrasting colors, search community color palettes and check for colorblind accessibility. Additionally, if you have a color in mind, you can search it to find colors that will look visually pleasing.

The other source is Coolors which is helpful in getting color palette inspiration.

3.) Try to stick to a few colors - using two or three colors is a great way to maintain a visually beautiful viz while emphasizing the data points of importance (or just emphasis in general).

4.) White space and spacing go a long way - both of these are to prevent an overwhelming viz. Having correct spacing between charts and text will help the audience stay focused on one thing at a time and also ensure time to ingest the information.

5.) Simple charts can get the point across - sometimes you don't need fancy charts to show simple data, it may look cool but it may not serve the purpose to the audience. Bar charts can do wonders!