As an example, at least for graph production, Excel seems to be the common software. It's pretty hard to get decent looking stuff compared to some old fashioned

As an example, at least for graph production, Excel seems to be the common software. It's pretty hard to get decent looking stuff compared to some old fashioned software that were used to create graphs earlier before that. There used to be specialists doing the graphs for various printed materials. Now it's all made by the marketers, consultants or number crunchers themselves. Of course the quality has been so bad ever since that happened, but nobody seems to care. Even designers don't really understand much about graphs.