A friend of mine just asked me what I thought of the 'One Page Project Manager' status reports. Since I hadn't heard of this I did some research and I'm pretty impressed. I like efficient use of graphics. Here is an example I pulled from this blog:

There's a lot of info here so you might be better off going to the link of the blog itself so you can zoom in better. By efficient use of two dimensions, major deliverables can be identified, the owners determined, the due dates displayed and the status shown in color codes.

The owner of this system sells books and has a great website.