Chart Prompts

1,337 ways to dress a line or bar chart, 669 light and 668 dark. Open any chart to see it full size and copy a prompt that gives your own chart the same look.

Every chart uses illustrative data. The prompts work with any coding agent and any charting library; they describe colors, type, spacing and marks precisely enough to reproduce each look.

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Pen Plotter line chart, light theme: Felt-tip pen strokes with ink pools, pen-lift gaps and registration crosses.

Pen Plotter

LightLine

Felt-tip pen strokes with ink pools, pen-lift gaps and registration crosses.

  • Plotter paper#FBFBF8
  • Black pen#1A1A1A
  • Red pen#D4322C
  • Blue pen#1F4FB5

Prompt for your coding agent

Paste it with your chart's code. It restyles your data to match this chart.

Restyle my chart in the "Pen Plotter" style described below. Keep my data, chart type, title meaning and units; change only the presentation. Use the charting library this project already uses (plain SVG if there is none). If the library can't express a detail, draw it in a custom layer instead of dropping it. Measurements assume a 960 x 600 chart; scale them proportionally.

Mood: a chart drawn by a flatbed pen plotter with three felt-tip pens on bright white paper. Precise and mechanical, but every stroke shows the pen: ink pools where it touches down, small gaps where it lifts, a faint double line where it retraces.

Colors (use these exact values):
- Paper: #FBFBF8 for the whole canvas. No panels, cards or fills.
- Pens: #1A1A1A (black, pen 1), #D4322C (red, pen 2), #1F4FB5 (blue, pen 3). Every mark, tick, rule and label is drawn in one of these three pens.
- Secondary text only: #55554F (subtitle, table headers) and #8A8A82 (source, small notes).

Typography (Google Fonts):
- Major Mono Display 400 for everything the plotter "letters": the title (22px, lowercase source text, which the font renders as single-stroke capitals, 0.5px letter-spacing, black pen), axis tick labels (12px), month labels (12px), end-of-line value labels (13px in the series pen) and the title-block heading (14px).
- IBM Plex Mono for the subtitle (13px 400), legend names (13px 500 in the series pen), table cells (13px; totals 600 in the series pen), table headers (11px 600 uppercase, 1.2px letter-spacing) and title-block fields (10.5px, 0.6px letter-spacing).

Layout:
- Title at x 64, y 70; subtitle 28px below stating measure, unit and period.
- Plot area about x 104 to 640, y 150 to 470. A right column from x 690 to 916 holds a pen legend (a 24px stroke sample in each pen, the series name, and "pen 1/2/3" in #8A8A82 right-aligned), then a small data table (series, latest value, year total), then the title block.
- Title block at lower right: a 226 x 96 ruled box plotted in black, split by horizontal rules at 34px and 64px and a vertical rule at 120px, holding the owner name, a drawing number, "SHEET 1 / 1", pen count and pen size.
- Registration marks in all four corners, 34px in from each edge: a 7px-radius circle crossed by 24px horizontal and vertical strokes, 1px black.

Axes and grid:
- Axes are two separate black strokes (1.3px) meeting at the origin, each starting with its own ink pool. Retrace the corner once: a 1.3px black path 0.6px offset at 45% opacity.
- 7px outward tick strokes (1.2px, round caps) at each y label and each category; labels 14px left of the axis and 24px below it.
- Horizontal guides plotted by the blue pen at low pressure: 0.8px, dash 1 on 7 off, round caps, 55% opacity. No vertical guides.

Marks:
- Every pen stroke: 1.6px wide, round caps and joins, 90% opacity (so overlaps darken), plus an ink pool at its start point: a filled circle of radius about 1.1 x stroke width (plus up to 0.5px jitter) at 75% opacity, nudged 0.3px right and 0.2px down.
- Line chart: straight segments, no smoothing. Split each series into three strokes with pen lifts at two interior points; each lift falls midway along a segment (away from the point crosses) and leaves a 6px gap, and the next stroke begins with an ink pool. Plot every data point as a small cross (two diagonal strokes, 3.6px arms, 1.3px). Retrace the final 45% of the last segment 0.8px lower at 40% opacity. Label each line's last value just right of its end in its pen.
- Bar chart: each bar is an outline plotted as one closed stroke (start pool at the lower left corner), filled with 45-degree hatching in the same pen (1px strokes, 6px apart, 90% opacity), with a pen-lift gap in the hatching every few lines. Series use the three pens in order. Value labels in Major Mono Display 13px above each bar.
- Annotation: a dashed circle (1.1px, dash 3 on 2.2 off, radius 11) in the red pen around the key event, a straight red leader and a single lowercase word in Major Mono Display 12px.

Avoid: fills of any kind (except hatching), gradients, shadows, colors other than the three pens, smooth curves, rounded boxes, and perfectly continuous lines.

When you're done, render the chart and check that pen-lift gaps and ink pools are visible at full size, every mark is one of the three pens, all four registration marks sit inside the canvas, and the table totals match the data.