What is your approach to displaying/presenting many years of demand data?

I often Google Image Search for ideas on how to present and display data, but I'd also like to hear from other people working in this field.

When you have several years of demand data you want to present and discuss, do you have a certain approach you take? Do you total quarters or years, and pad the column with a couple of averages? Maybe you just put it all in 40+ columns? Pivot, or pivot slicers? I did start using graphs one time and I got jokingly-scolded because it apparently made it look like I had a ton of spare time.

I imagine there must be plenty of other people like me who consider the formatting to be incredibly important, and I really dislike having a ton of columns so always look for ways to condense the data. It will be interesting to know what your thoughts are.