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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Napkin Sketch line chart, light theme: Wobbly pen lines, crooked arrow axes and a hand-lettered joke annotation.

Napkin Sketch

LightLine

Wobbly pen lines, crooked arrow axes and a hand-lettered joke annotation.

  • Paper#FDFCF7
  • Ink#1A1A1A
  • Marker Red#E4572E
  • Marker Blue#1F7FB8
  • Pencil#555049

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 "Napkin Sketch" 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 hand-drawn comic chart, the kind someone sketches on a napkin to make a point with a wink. Black pen on off-white paper, one or two marker colors, and a dry joke in the annotation.

Colors (use these exact values):
- Paper: #FDFCF7, with a very faint paper grain (feTurbulence fractalNoise, baseFrequency 0.7, at about 25% opacity in a warm gray).
- Ink: #1A1A1A for axes, ticks, tick labels, the title and the annotation.
- Series 1, Marker Red: #E4572E. Series 2, Marker Blue: #1F7FB8. Use red for the series the story is about.
- Pencil: #555049 for the subtitle, the axis name and the second line of the annotation. Source line #6E6960.

Typography (Google Fonts):
- Patrick Hand for the title (40px), subtitle (20px), tick labels (20px), direct labels (24px, with an 18px unit line under it) and the source line (17px, lowercase, with a small joke in parentheses).
- Caveat for the annotation: a 32px 700 lead line and a 27px 400 second line.

Layout:
- Title top left at 56px from the left, stating the finding with a punchline. Underline it with a wobbly Marker Red stroke (4px, round caps, 85% opacity) that spans the title's width.
- A small doodled coffee mug (or another doodle that fits the topic) right of the title: wobbly 2.4px ink outline, a handle, a marker-color fill line and three squiggly steam wisps.
- Subtitle below the title. The plot sits below with generous space; the annotation floats in the empty upper part of the plot.

Axes and grid:
- No gridlines. Draw only a y axis and an x axis as single 2.6px ink strokes, each a little crooked (the y axis leans about 4px over its length, the x axis rises about 4px), ending in open pen arrowheads made of two short 14px strokes at about 26 degrees.
- Ticks are short 12px hand strokes crossing the axis, labeled in Patrick Hand. Put the axis name ("weeks") after the x arrowhead in Pencil.

Wobble (this is what sells the style):
- Never draw a perfectly straight line. Resample every path every 4 to 5px and push each point sideways along the path normal by the sum of three sine waves with random phases (wavelengths between about 65 and 520px, amplitudes 2.2px, 1.1px and 0.7px for data lines; about 1.3px for axes; under 1px for ticks and arrows). Seed the randomness so it's stable.

Marks:
- Line chart: 4px marker lines with round caps and joins, straight segments between points (the wobble supplies the character). Draw an 11px paper-colored halo under each line first so crossings stay clean. No point markers. Label each line directly at its end in its own color instead of a legend.
- Bar chart: bars drawn as wobbly 2.6px ink outlines (not filled rectangles), filled with loose diagonal marker hatching (3px strokes, 10px apart) in the series color, with the same wobble. Value labels above bars in Patrick Hand 20px.

Labels and annotation:
- One joke annotation in Caveat near the most interesting point, with a curvy hand-drawn arrow (a quadratic curve with wobble, 2.4px ink, open pen arrowhead) that ends a few pixels short of the point.

Avoid: gridlines, straight machine-perfect lines, closed filled arrowheads, drop shadows, gradients, more than two marker colors, and a boxed legend.

When you're done, render the chart and check that every line visibly wobbles, the arrow points at the right spot without touching the data, direct labels don't collide with the axis arrowhead, and the joke reads at thumbnail size.