elementalist

/ˌɛlɪˈmɛntlɪst/

An element of whimsy

elementalist extends the theme element options of ggplot2. It provides variations on rectangular and line elements that go into ggplot2’s theme() function, which tweaks the appearance of your plots. The package also has some geoms that are instructed to draw their lines and rectangles according to the theme. This is mostly a pet project that still needs some time to grow.

Installation

You can install the development version from GitHub with:

devtools::install_github("teunbrand/elementalist")

Examples

At the moment, the package has three ‘styles’ to choose from for lines. They are ‘wiggle’, ‘multicolour’ and ‘glow’.

Wiggle

It reminded me of the retinal detachment I had last year. Cheers
-Henrik (2020)

Here is an example how you can make your elements wiggle!

library(elementalist)
#> Loading required package: ggplot2

x <- seq(-3, 3, length.out = 20)
df <- data.frame(
  x = c(x, x),
  y = c(dnorm(x, sd = 1), c(x)/20),
  cat = rep(LETTERS[1:2], each = 20)
)

ggplot(df, aes(x, y, colour = cat)) +
  geom_line_theme(linewidth = 1) +
  coord_cartesian(clip = "off") +
  theme(
    elementalist.geom_line = element_line_wiggle(6, n = 6),
    legend.key       = element_rect_wiggle(1, colour = NA), 
    panel.background = element_rect_wiggle(sides = c("lb"),
                                           colour = "black"),
    panel.grid.major = element_line_wiggle(3),
    panel.grid.minor = element_line_wiggle(3)
  )

Multicolour

Here is how you can make them colour gradients. It defaults to rainbow colours, but you can set your own.

ggplot(economics, aes(date, unemploy)) +
  geom_line_theme() +
  theme(
    elementalist.geom_line = element_line_multicolour(),
    axis.line = element_line_multicolour(),
    panel.grid.minor = element_line_multicolour(c("white", "transparent", "white"))
  )

Glow

Glowing lines work well with a dark background. Elementalist has a theme that makes it easy to make a plot quite dark.

df <- data.frame(
  x = rep(c(2, 5, 7, 9, 12), 2),
  y = rep(c(1, 2), each = 5),
  z = factor(rep(1:5, each = 2)),
  w = rep(diff(c(0, 4, 6, 8, 10, 14)), 2)
)

ggplot(df, aes(xmin = x - w / 2, xmax = x + w / 2, ymin = y, ymax = y + 1)) +
  geom_rect_theme(aes(colour = z), fill = NA) +
  scale_colour_manual(
    values =  c("#00E6FF","#CF77F0", "#8F9FFF", 
                "#2ABEFF", "#FD006A")
  ) +
  theme_black() +
  theme(
    panel.grid = element_line_glow(colour = "grey10"),
    axis.line = element_line_glow(colour = alpha("#FD006A", 0.5)),
    axis.ticks = element_line_glow(colour = alpha("#FD006A", 0.5)),
    elementalist.geom_rect = element_rect_glow()
  )

Footnotes

This package is still in the experimental phase. Expect some bugs here and there and use at your own risk!

The logo is based on the ‘squared circle’ alchemical symbol representing the four elements of matter and the philosopher’s stone. With an extra hexagon of course, because this is an R package, after all.