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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Washi line chart, light theme: Fibrous paper, one tapering sumi brush stroke and a vermilion seal.

Washi

LightLine

Fibrous paper, one tapering sumi brush stroke and a vermilion seal.

  • Paper#F4EFE4
  • Sumi#1C1A17
  • Vermilion#D0402B
  • Ash#8A847A
  • Fiber#D8CDB8

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 "Washi" 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: Japanese minimalism. Handmade fibrous paper, one confident sumi ink brush stroke, a vermilion seal and a great deal of empty space. Every element earns its place.

Colors (use these exact values):
- Paper: #F4EFE4.
- Sumi ink: #1C1A17 for the data mark and the title.
- Ash: #8A847A for the subtitle, axis labels and source.
- Vermilion: #D0402B, used only for the seal and at most one small marker on the single most important data point.
- Paper fibers: #D8CDB8 and #C9BCA3.
- A second series, if I have one, is sumi at 45% opacity drawn with a thinner brush; never add a second hue.

Paper texture (draw it, don't skip it):
- A low-frequency cloudy mottle: feTurbulence fractalNoise, baseFrequency 0.006 x 0.009, 3 octaves, tinted warm brown, at about 25% strength.
- A fine tooth: fractalNoise at baseFrequency 0.75, 2 octaves, at about 20% strength.
- Fibers: about 400 short curved strands (quadratic curves 5 to 30px long, with roughly 12% of them 50 to 110px), stroke 0.35 to 1.25px, 25 to 60% opacity, in the two fiber colors, scattered at random angles.

Typography (Google Fonts): Shippori Mincho for everything, Japanese and Latin.
- English title 27px 600. Subtitle 15px 400 with 0.6px letter-spacing. Axis labels 13px. Annotation 13px. Source 11px uppercase with 3px letter-spacing.
- A vertical Japanese title (writing-mode: vertical-rl) in the right margin, 40px 600 with 10px letter-spacing, with a smaller vertical line beside it at 14px 400 in ash. Use a short phrase that matches my chart's subject.

Seal (the signature element):
- A 60px vermilion square with 5px radius under the vertical title, a 1.6px paper-colored inner frame inset 4.5px, and one or two carved characters in paper color at 24px 800 stacked vertically.
- Make it look stamped: roughen it with feTurbulence (baseFrequency 0.7) plus feDisplacementMap at scale about 1.8, and knock out small uneven specks with a second noise (baseFrequency 0.16) used as an alpha mask so about 10% of the ink is missing.

Layout:
- Title block top left at a 104px margin. Plot in the left three quarters; the right quarter is reserved for the vertical title and seal. Leave the top of the plot and the area around the title empty.

Axes and grid:
- No gridlines. Three y labels only, each with a short 8px ash tick, right-aligned left of the plot. One 0.6px ash baseline at 70% opacity with four small 6px ticks and year or category labels in ash with 1px letter-spacing.

Marks:
- Line chart: draw the raw values as faint 2.3px sumi dots at 26% opacity, and the trend (a Gaussian-smoothed series) as a filled brush ribbon, not a stroked line. Offset the path along its normals by a pressure curve: a quick pressed-in head about 20px wide, relaxing through the body with a gentle swell and thinning, and tapering to a fine tip at the end. Make the lower edge slightly heavier than the upper. Roughen the edges with fractalNoise displacement at scale 1.6, lay a 1.6px blurred copy at 22% opacity underneath as ink bleed, and mask the last 30% with horizontal streak noise (baseFrequency 0.003 x 0.2) fading out so the tip goes dry.
- Bar chart: each bar is a single vertical brush stroke of the same ribbon technique, pressed at the base and lifting off at the top, in sumi at 90%; no fills, outlines or rounded rectangles. The one highlighted bar may carry a small vermilion dot above it.
- Annotate at most one point, in plain 13px text beside it, with no leader line or box.

Avoid: gridlines, legends with boxes, gradients, drop shadows, pure black or white, sans-serif type, any color besides ink and the single vermilion, and anything symmetrical or busy.

When you're done, render the chart and check that the brush visibly tapers and goes dry at the end, the seal characters are still legible through the texture, the fibers are subtle rather than hairy, and at least a third of the canvas is empty paper.