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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Pointed Pen line chart, light theme: Copperplate on laid paper, with lines that swell on every downstroke.

Pointed Pen

LightLine

Copperplate on laid paper, with lines that swell on every downstroke.

  • Laid paper#FAF6EC
  • Iron-gall ink#3B2A1E
  • Faded sepia#A0826D
  • Pencil#C9C0AE

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 "Pointed Pen" 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 page of copperplate penmanship on ivory laid paper. Every line looks written with a flexible steel nib dipped in iron-gall ink: hairline on the way up, swelling on the way down. Quiet, careful and hand-made, but still an exact chart.

Colors (use these exact values):
- Paper: #FAF6EC for the whole canvas, with laid-paper texture: 0.6px horizontal lines of #EFE8D8 every 6px and 1.2px vertical chain lines of #EFE8D8 every 120px.
- Primary ink (main series, title, category labels): #3B2A1E iron-gall brown.
- Secondary ink (comparison series, subtitle, axis figures, source): #A0826D faded sepia.
- Pencil ruling (gridlines and slant guides): #C9C0AE.
- Ink pools at data points: a radial gradient from #3B2A1E at 82% opacity in the center to #24170F at the rim.

Typography (Google Fonts):
- Pinyon Script for the title only: 50px, #3B2A1E, centered, stating the finding in sentence case.
- Cormorant Garamond italic for everything else: subtitle 18px #A0826D centered (measure, unit, who and when, plus the headline totals); axis figures 15px #A0826D; month or category labels 16px #3B2A1E; direct series labels 20px weight 600 in the series color; annotations 16px #3B2A1E; source and unit notes 14px #A0826D.

Layout:
- Title baseline at y 92, centered. Under it a flourished underline: a filled swelled lens from x 300 to 660 (about 8px thick at its middle, tapering to a point at each end) at y 117 to 121, with 1px hairline tails curling into small loops at both ends (to about x 222 and x 738).
- Subtitle baseline at y 162. Plot area x 112 to 842, y 214 to 516. Month labels 26px below the baseline. Footer at y 574: "Source: illustrative data" left, a short unit note right.

Axes and grid:
- No y-axis line. Horizontal pencil rules (0.7px #C9C0AE) at round values, extending 20px past the plot on both sides, with italic figures 30px left of the plot.
- Slant guides behind the plot: 0.5px #C9C0AE lines at 55% opacity, 38px apart, leaning 35 degrees from vertical (the copperplate writing slant), clipped to the plot area.
- Baseline: 0.9px #A0826D.

Marks:
- Line chart: draw each series as a filled ribbon, not a stroke. Smooth the line with a monotone cubic and sample it densely; at each sample the width = hairline + swell x min(1, max(0, downward slope component) x 3.2), where the downward component is the y-direction share of the unit tangent (screen y grows downward). Main series: hairline 1.1px, swell 6.4px, #3B2A1E. Comparison series: hairline 0.9px, swell 4px, #A0826D. Upward strokes stay hairline, downward strokes swell like a pressed nib. Data points: ink pools (r 3.6) on the main series, plain sepia dots (r 2.6) on the comparison.
- Bar chart: bars as pen-drawn shapes: a 1px #3B2A1E hairline outline on the left, top and right, with the right edge swelled to 4px (the downstroke) and a very light #3B2A1E fill at 10% opacity; the highlighted bar filled solid #3B2A1E. Bars about 45% of the band. Small ink-pool dots (r 3) centered on each bar top, value in 16px italic above.

Labels and annotation:
- Label series directly at the line ends (for example "2025", "2024") in 20px italic 600. No legend box.
- One annotation on the key point in 16px italic, two lines, right-aligned, joined to the point by a short 0.9px curved hairline.

Avoid: sans-serif type, heavy uniform strokes, gridlines darker than pencil, straight-line segments, saturated colors, drop shadows and boxes.

When you're done, render the chart and check that the downward stretches of each line visibly swell while the rises stay hairline, that the Pinyon Script title is legible at thumbnail size, and that the pencil slant guides stay faint behind the data.