Themes

Readings

• Chapter 22 in Claus Wilke, Fundamentals of Data Visualization¹
• Naomi Robbins, “Are Grid Lines Useful or Chartjunk?”
• Stephen Few, “Grid Lines in Graphs are Rarely Useful”
• Henry Wang, “ggplot2 Theme Elements Demonstration”
• Glance through the documentation for ggplot’s complete themes and theme(), especially the examples near the bottom

Questions to reflect on

(Remember, you don’t need to answer all of these—or even any of them! These are just here to help guide your thinking.)

• How do the principles of CRAP apply to graph design and other theme elements?
• Should plots use gridlines? Naomi Robbins says yes; Stephen Few says no—what do you say?

Slides

The slides for today’s lesson are available online as an HTML file. Use the buttons below to open the slides either as an interactive website or as a static PDF (for printing or storing for later). You can also click in the slides below and navigate through them with your left and right arrow keys.

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• Introduction
• CRAP and ggplot
• The anatomy of a ggplot theme

Videos

Videos for each section of the lecture are available at this YouTube playlist.

• Introduction
• CRAP and ggplot
• The anatomy of a ggplot theme

You can also watch the playlist (and skip around to different sections) here: