Quick start

The ggthemes package in R extends ggplot2 by providing additional themes and scales inspired by various sources, including popular data visualization styles and software.

Installation

To get started with ggthemes, you can install it directly from CRAN using the install.packages function:

install.packages("ggthemes")

Basic usage

The ggthemes package allows you to apply pre-built themes to your ggplot2 charts using the theme_*() functions.

Here’s a basic example:

library(ggplot2)
library(ggthemes)

p <- ggplot(iris, aes(x = Sepal.Length, y = Sepal.Width, color = Species, shape = Species)) +
  geom_point(size = 4) +
  labs(
    title = "Sepal Length vs Sepal Width by Species",
    x = "Sepal Length (cm)",
    y = "Sepal Width (cm)",
    caption = "Data source: Iris dataset"
  )

p + theme_economist()

Key features

ggthemes provides a wide range of pre-built themes inspired by various sources.

It includes a comprehensive set of theme_*() functions that can transform the overall appearance of a chart, as well as several additional functions such as:

• scale_color_*(): maps data to the color aesthetic
• scale_shape_*(): maps data to the shape aesthetic

This allows for easy and seamless integration of theme, color, and shape in any chart.

The following examples will demonstrate excellent combinations of these functions and their visual impact!

p + theme_fivethirtyeight() + scale_color_fivethirtyeight()

p + theme_economist()

p + theme_excel() + scale_color_excel()

p + theme_calc() + scale_color_calc() + scale_shape_calc()

p + theme_igray()

p + theme_few()

p + theme_solarized() + scale_color_solarized()

p + theme_solarized(light = FALSE) + scale_color_solarized()

p + theme_tufte()

p + theme_wsj()

p + theme_stata() + scale_color_stata() + scale_shape_stata()

Gallery of ggthemes examples

If you’d like to try it out interactively, click on the video below!