CGD-R-theme

A ggplot2 theme for CGD graphs

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This is a script to implement CGD's branding and data viz guidelines on ggplot graphs. There are other versions of this script floating around, but the point of this repository is to serve as the canonical version. If you have a change or improvement to the script (very welcome!) please submit a pull request, if you have your own Github, account or contact Jeremy Gaines ([email protected]) to get the direct login info.

The Stata version of this script is available here.

Instructions

1. Either clone the repository or download the relevant file directly here.
2. Load it in R and apply it to your ggplot graphs

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Guide: CGD Sharepoint

This script:

1. Provides the colors and color order to use CGD colors for graphs.

2. Provides a theme_cgd object that can be added to ggplots to automate non-data aspects of plots.

Colors

It's not really possible to automate how color is used, as it depends so much on the data. Below are some general instructions on how the guide recommends they be used (but feel free to experiment yourself).

There are three types of color order: categorical is for non-ordered, categorical variables; sequential is for neutral or all-positive scales/gradations, like 10%>20%>30% or good>better>best; polar is for when there is a negative component, like -10%>0>10% or bad>neutral>good.

For each of sequential and polar, there are several options depending on how much of a range of color the user wants the scale to cover. Will generally want to use sequential2 or sequential3 (looks cleaner), but if they want to tease out differences in middle parts of the scale they can use higher.

When using scale_fill_discrete() or scale_color_discrete() with polar or sequential, you can use type = sequential or type = polar and ggplot will automatically use the version with the same number of colors as levels of the factor it is graphing.

For sequential, an alternative is using alpha: set alpha = continuous_variable within aes, and use fill = light_teal (or another CGD color) outside of it

Note that guide also recommends light gray to denote 'none/neutral' for categorical or sequential graphs. If you use all light gray for category or part of sequence, and also have none/neutral elements, then need to use a different color to denote 'none/neutral'

CGD theme

You can just save theme_cgd as an object and then add it to a graph like this:

ggplot(data) +
  geom_point(aes(x, y)) +
  theme_cgd

Note, no brackets after.

Ideally, this would be a one-size-fits-all add-on, but in practice users will still need to make modifications. You can modify the specs here by adding on your own theme() after theme_cgd - note it must be after, otherwise theme_cgd will just overwrite it.

Note that placing y-axis title above axis (on top left) is only possible by setting the plot subtitle as the desired y-axis title. Set subtitle with labs(subtitle = "This is a subtitle").

CGD graphs should use the "Sofia Pro" font, available here.

First download them, then open each one and press install; this should automatically install them to your system fonts ("C:\Windows\Fonts" or similar) and make them available to R. You will need to close R down and reopen it (not just restart the session to make this work).

Other plot features (projections, trend lines, separators) are data features and therefore need to be added and styled manually.