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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Shelf Classes bar chart, light theme: Library-label colored bars on a wooden shelf, each capped with a white spine tab.

Shelf Classes

LightBar

Library-label colored bars on a wooden shelf, each capped with a white spine tab.

  • Gray-blue#E9EEF2
  • Brick#A8432F
  • Ochre#C8952B
  • Teal#2E8578
  • Plum#7A3F6B
  • Shelf wood#8A5A36

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 "Shelf Classes" 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: books standing on a library shelf. Each bar is a spine in a muted library-label color, capped by a white spine-label tab with its class letter. Cool gray-blue air around it, condensed type, and a warm wooden shelf edge as the baseline.

Colors (use these exact values):
- Background: #E9EEF2 (cool gray-blue).
- Text: #2B2F33 (charcoal); muted text #66707A; gridlines #CFD8DF.
- Category colors, one per group, in this order so neighbors always differ in both hue and lightness: brick #A8432F, slate #4A6380, moss #6B7F3A, ochre #C8952B, teal #2E8578, plum #7A3F6B. Put ochre text in a darker #8C6515 for contrast.
- Label tabs: #FFFFFF. Shelf edge: #8A5A36 wood, as a vertical gradient from #A9764B at the top to #6E4528 at the bottom.

Typography (Google Fonts): Barlow Condensed for everything. Title 700 32px charcoal, stating the finding. Subtitle 400 18px muted. A total or summary figure top right, 600 16px charcoal. Tab letters 700 19px; tab values 600 13px; category names 500 13.5px charcoal; group names 600 12px uppercase with 1.4px letter-spacing in the group's color; axis numbers 500 15px muted; notes 14px muted.

Layout:
- 64px side margins. Title and subtitle top left. Plot from about y 170 to the shelf at y 470.
- Categories are grouped (two or three per group) with 14px between bars in a group and 34px between groups; order groups meaningfully and color by group.
- Under the shelf: category names, then a thin bracket (1.5px, group color, 6px legs) spanning each group with the group name centered below it. This replaces a legend.
- Source line bottom left, a short note on how to read the tabs bottom right.

Axes and grid:
- Light horizontal gridlines (#CFD8DF, 1px) at round values with muted numbers at the left. No y-axis line.
- The baseline is the shelf: a 9px wood-gradient bar across the plot with a 2px soft dark line (charcoal at 12%) under it.

Marks:
- Bar chart: square-cornered vertical bars about 44px wide in the group color, starting at zero on the shelf, each with a faint 3px white highlight stripe (12% opacity) 4px in from the left edge like a spine crease. A white tab 38 x 38px (radius 4, soft 1px shadow) caps each bar, sticking up 10px above the bar top; it holds the class letter or short code on top, a 1.5px rule in the bar color, and the value underneath.
- Line chart: one 3px line per group in the group colors over the same background and shelf baseline, round joins. At each point a small white tab (26 x 20, radius 3) with the value; at the line end a larger tab with the series letter. Group brackets and names under the x axis as for bars, or direct labels at line ends.

Avoid: saturated primaries, gradients on the bars, rounded bar tops, 3D books, a separate legend box, and more than six category colors.

When you're done, render the chart and check that even the shortest bar's tab stays within its bar and above the shelf, no category names collide under the shelf, and every group bracket spans exactly its bars.