I really like everything about ggplot2's ggtheme's theme_fivethirtyeight() except for the fact that it hides all axis titles.
How can I use theme_fivethirtyeight() but tell it to inherit the axis title specification from another theme?
3 Answers
This can be solved many ways. The shortest might be to override the element_text argument as @eipi10 suggests. This would need to be repeated for each individual plot.
Another way is to create your own custom theme based on an existing theme. The benefit of this approach is that you can reuse your theme once you get it exactly how you like it. Here is an example using theme_fivethiryeight().
The key part is:
mytheme <- theme_fivethirtyeight() +
theme(axis.title = element_text(colour = "black" ))
Creating some dummy data to work with:
library("ggplot2")
library("ggthemes")
# make the results reproducible
set.seed(5117)
start_date <- as.Date("2015-01-01")
end_date <- as.Date("2017-06-10")
# the by=7 makes it one observation per week (adjust as needed)
dates <- seq(from = start_date, to = end_date, by = 7)
val1 <- rnorm(length(dates), mean = 12.5, sd = 3)
qnt <- quantile(val1, c(.05, .25, .75, .95))
mock <- data.frame(myDate = dates, val1)
p <- ggplot(data = mock, mapping = aes(x = myDate, y = val1)) +
geom_line() +
geom_point() +
geom_hline(yintercept = qnt[1], colour = "red") +
geom_hline(yintercept = qnt[4], colour = "red") +
geom_hline(yintercept = qnt[2], colour = "lightgreen") +
geom_hline(yintercept = qnt[3], colour = "lightgreen") +
scale_x_date(date_breaks = "6 month", date_labels = "%b-%y") +
theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, hjust = 1))
Here is adding the original theme_fivethirtyeight() for reference:
p + theme_fivethirtyeight()
Creating a custom theme:
mytheme <- theme_fivethirtyeight() +
theme(axis.title = element_text(colour = "black" ))
Applying the custom theme to the original plot:
p + mytheme
You can type the theme name (without the "()") at the command prompt to get an idea of what other options are available to customize. Here I highlighted the axis.title = element_blank() that was replaced:
1 Comment
Lucas Spangher
Thank you so much for the thorough and complete answer. In retrospect, it's obvious -- sorry -- but I wasn't sure which element to replace, and what would happen to the other parts of the text element (size, angle, etc) all that were inherited as NULL from theme_fivethirtyeight(). Anyway, thank you!
You can use %+replace% to replace the specific theme elements you want. For any theme you can retrieve the theme element by using [[. So if you wanted the theme for axis.title from theme_gdocs you would do: theme_gdocs()[["axis.title"]]. This should work for you:
ggplot(mtcars) + geom_point(aes(hp, cyl)) +
theme_fivethirtyeight() %+replace% theme(axis.title = theme_gdocs()[["axis.title"]],
axis.title.x = theme_gdocs()[["axis.title.x"]],
axis.title.y = theme_gdocs()[["axis.title.y"]])
I used theme_gdocs as an example but you can replace that with whatever theme you want.
Comments
ggplot_merge_styles <- function(theme, ...) {
elements <- lapply(as.list(match.call())[-1], function(x) eval(parse(text=deparse(x))))
for (element in names(elements)) {
if (element != 'theme') {
theme[[element]] <- elements[[element]]
}
}
return(theme)
}
Then you can specify certain design attributes and merge them together with other styles.
For instance, I enjoy the theme_minimal()'s design on plot.title, except that I want it to be coloured gray instead of it's ordinary black. Then by running the following code, all plot.title properties are preserved except for colour which is being replaced:
plot <-
... +
theme(plot.title = ggplot_merge_styles(theme_minimal()[['plot.title']], colour = "#6f7170"))
Comments
theme_fivethirtyeight() + theme(axis.title=element_text()). If you typetheme_fivethirtyeightin the console, you'll see the code fortheme_fivethirtyeight(). Note in that code the statementaxis.title=element_blank(). You just need to override that as in the code above.