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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Photocopy Safe line chart, light theme: Black ink and one gray, series told apart by dash and marker, built to be copied.

Photocopy Safe

LightLine

Black ink and one gray, series told apart by dash and marker, built to be copied.

  • Paper#FFFFFF
  • Ink#000000
  • Grid gray#7A7A7A

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 "Photocopy Safe" 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 county report that will be photocopied, faxed and pinned to a notice board. Blunt, heavy and unambiguous: black ink on white paper, with nothing that depends on color or fine shading to be understood.

Colors (use these exact values):
- Paper: #FFFFFF for the whole canvas.
- Ink: #000000 for every data mark, all text, the frame, the baseline and the footer rule.
- The one gray: #7A7A7A, used only for the 1px horizontal gridlines. No other colors, tints or opacities anywhere.

Typography (Google Fonts):
- Title: IBM Plex Sans Condensed 700, 36px, black, sentence case, stating the finding with the number in it.
- Everything else: IBM Plex Sans. Subtitle 17px 400 (measure, unit, place and period). Eyebrow 13px 700 uppercase with 1.6px letter-spacing, set in white inside a solid black 24px tall tab. Tick labels 14px 500 (the zero label 700). Axis word ("WEEK") 12px 700 uppercase with 1.4px letter-spacing. End labels: series name 17px 700 with the latest value and unit under it in 15px 400. Footer 14px 500, and the copy-safe note 12px 700 uppercase with 1.4px letter-spacing.

Layout:
- A thick black frame: a 6px stroke rectangle inset 18px from every edge.
- 48px inner margins. Black eyebrow tab at the top, title about 42px below it, subtitle under the title.
- The plot runs from x 104 to 760, y 160 to 486. The 170px to its right holds the direct end labels.
- Footer: a 2px black rule at y 536, "Source: ..." at the left, and at the right a 336 x 22 px box with a 1.5px black outline containing "COPY-SAFE: BLACK INK + ONE GRAY".

Axes and grid:
- Horizontal gridlines at round values, 1px #7A7A7A solid. No vertical gridlines.
- A bold, unmistakable zero baseline: 4px solid black, drawn over everything else in the plot. The y axis always starts at zero.
- Y tick labels right-aligned 12px left of the plot with thousands separators. Short 8px black tick marks (2px) under each x category, labels 28px below the baseline; the axis word sits under the y labels.

Marks:
- Line chart: every series is a 2.5px black line with round joins, told apart only by dash pattern and marker shape. Series 1: solid line with filled black circles (r 5.5). Series 2: long dash (12 on, 6 off) with hollow squares (10px, white fill, 2.5px black stroke). Series 3: dotted (0.1 on, 6.5 off with round caps) with filled black triangles (13px wide). A fourth series would use dash-dot with hollow diamonds. A marker sits on every data point. No legend: at the right end of each line draw a short 1.5px leader in the same dash style, a repeat of that series' marker, then the name and latest value.
- Bar chart: black and white only. Series 1 solid black bars, series 2 white bars with a 2.5px black outline, series 3 white bars with bold black diagonal hatching (2px lines, 7px apart), all square-cornered, sitting on the 4px zero baseline, with the value in 14px 700 black above each bar and direct labels instead of a legend.

Avoid: any color, gradients, transparency, light tints, thin hairlines under 1px, shadows, text set in gray, and anything that relies on color to tell series apart.

When you're done, render the chart and check it in pure grayscale and at half size: every series must still be identifiable by pattern and shape alone, the zero baseline must be the heaviest line in the plot, the frame must be unbroken, and the only non-black ink should be the gray gridlines.