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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Surname Count bar chart, light theme: Small-caps surnames on dotted leaders to forest bars, top three darker with shares.

Surname Count

LightBar

Small-caps surnames on dotted leaders to forest bars, top three darker with shares.

  • Soft sage#DDE5D5
  • Forest green#3F6B4E
  • Deep forest#2B4C37
  • Ink green#1F2E24

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 "Surname Count" 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 local history society's register tally. Soft sage paper, bookish small-caps names on dotted leaders, calm forest-green bars and a careful footnote.

Colors (use these exact values):
- Background: #DDE5D5 (soft sage).
- Bars: #3F6B4E (muted forest). The top three bars: #2B4C37 (deep forest).
- Primary text: #1F2E24. Secondary text, leaders and ranks: #5B6B5F. Faint reference rules: #B9C7B2.
- Share figures inside the top bars are set in the background sage #DDE5D5.

Typography (Google Fonts):
- Spectral for the title (600, 32px, #1F2E24, stating the finding), the italic subtitle (16px, #5B6B5F) and the italic footnote (13px).
- Spectral SC for the category names (17px; 700 for the top three, 500 for the rest).
- Karla for every number: eyebrow 700 11px uppercase with 2.4px letter-spacing in #3F6B4E; rank numbers 600 12px zero-padded ("01"); value labels 14px (700 in deep forest for the top three, 600 in #1F2E24 otherwise); shares 600 12px; axis numbers 12px; source 12px.

Layout:
- 56px side margins. Eyebrow, title and subtitle at the top, then a full-width 1px #1F2E24 rule.
- Rows about 28px tall. Rank at x 56, name at x 84, a dotted leader running from the name to 10px before the bar baseline at x 250. Bars run right from x 250.
- A 1px bracket to the right of the top three rows with their combined count (Karla 700 16px, deep forest) and share of the total (12px).
- At the bottom: a 1px #B9C7B2 rule, the footnote explaining merged spelling variants (with a small Karla asterisk after each merged name), then the source line left and a note on the share base right.

Axes and grid:
- Vertical 0.8px #B9C7B2 reference rules every 10 units with 12px Karla numbers below the last row.
- A 1.2px #1F2E24 baseline at the bar start. No other axis lines.

Marks:
- Bar chart: horizontal square-cornered bars 17px tall, sorted longest first, forest green, the top three deep forest with their share of the total printed inside the right end (right-aligned, 8px padding). Values 8px past the bar end.
- Line chart: the same rows and leaders become a dot plot on a single 1.4px #3F6B4E connecting line when the categories are ordered in time; dots r 5 forest (deep forest for the top three) with values beside them. Otherwise keep bars.
- Dotted leaders: 1.2px #5B6B5F, dash array "0.1 5" with round caps (dots every 5px), baseline-aligned with the names. Knock the leader out behind each name by giving the name a 7px sage stroke with paint-order stroke.

Avoid: rounded bars, gradients, bright greens, a legend, gridlines behind the names and more than two green tints.

When you're done, render the chart and check that the leaders stop cleanly at each name, the top-three shares and bracket total are arithmetically right, and the footnote lists every merged spelling.