Using custom fonts in R examples and exercises

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This lesson is called Using custom fonts in R examples and exercises, part of the The Glamour of Graphics course. This lesson is called Using custom fonts in R examples and exercises, part of the The Glamour of Graphics course.

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Your Turn

Solution

#using custom fonts is enabled by the ragg package
#install.packages("ragg")

library(ggplot2)
library(ragg)

##Your turn

#Take one of the charts we've made and add your own fonts to it

#I'm using this bar chart
plastics <- readr::read_csv('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/master/data/2021/2021-01-26/plastics.csv')

bar_chart <- 
  plastics %>%
  group_by(parent_company) %>%
  summarize(total = sum(grand_total, na.rm = TRUE)) %>%
  arrange(desc(total)) %>%
  slice(4:14) %>%
  mutate(parent_company = ifelse(parent_company == "NULL", "Unknown", parent_company)) %>%
  ggplot() +
  geom_col(aes(x = total, y = reorder(parent_company, total)), fill = "orchid4") +
  theme_light() +
  labs(title = "Top brands") +
  theme(axis.title = element_blank(), panel.border = element_blank(),
        panel.grid.minor.x = element_blank(),
        panel.grid.major.y = element_blank(),
        plot.title.position = "plot")

#to add the custom font, just specify the name in the family argument
bar_chart +
  theme(axis.text = element_text(family = "Loretta"),
        plot.title = element_text(family = "Montserrat"))

#Adjust the size or style of your text using theme elements
bar_chart +
  theme(axis.text = element_text(family = "Loretta", color = "black", size = 12),
        plot.title = element_text(family = "Montserrat", size = 16, face = "bold"))

#Save your chart with the custom fonts
ggsave("my_plot.png", device = agg_png)

Take one of the charts we’ve made and add your own fonts to it
Adjust the size or style of your text using theme elements
Save your chart with the custom fonts

Make sure you’ve installed the ragg package.

Learn More

This blog post talks about modern text features in R using the ragg and systemfonts packages.

Have any questions? Put them below and we will help you out!

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Blayne Beacham

February 20, 2023

I got one variation of the font that I want to work by using this:

systemfonts::register_variant( name = "Segoe UI Custom Semibold", family = "Segoe UI", weight = "semibold" )

However, I tried to do the same for a semilight version and it didn't work: systemfonts::register_variant( name = "Segoe UI Custom Semilight", family = "Segoe UI", weight = "semilight" )

For the latter I get "Error: No font with the given family name and weight/width settings available".

Am I missing something?

David Keyes

February 21, 2023

It looks like "semilight" isn't a weight that you can use. This is from the help file for register_variant():

One or two of "thin", "ultralight", "light", "normal", "medium", "semibold", "bold", "ultrabold", or "heavy". If one is given it sets the weight for the whole variant. If two is given the first one defines the plain weight and the second the bold weight. If NULL then the variants of the given family closest to "normal" and "bold" will be chosen.

Does it work if you choose, says, ultralight?

Blayne Beacham

March 8, 2023

Sorry for the late reply (started a new job). "light" did the trick!

Thanks so much. My viz game just took a nice jump up with these fonts!

David Keyes

March 8, 2023

Awesome, glad it worked!

soundarya soundararajan

March 9, 2023

I am getting a similar error reported by someone earlier. This is my code register_variant( "Rockwell_custom", Rockwell, weight = "semibold", features = font_feature(ligatures = "discretionary") ) and this is my error: Error: No font with the given family name and weight/width settings available

David Keyes

March 9, 2023

Are you sure the font is called "Rockwell_custom" (and not, for example, "Rockwell custom" or "Rockwell" or "Rockwell Custom")? You have to enter the exact name as it appears in the family column when you run systemfonts::system_fonts(). See https://show.rfor.us/RfczclV1

soundarya soundararajan

March 13, 2023

Thanks, I thought Rockwell_custom is a name I give for registering my variant with the family name Rockwell (which I wrote correctly). However, this doesn't seem to work for me, I am a newbie in fonts and any help would be appreciated. Here is the reprex of my error.

library(systemfonts)
library(tidyverse)
systemfonts::system_fonts() |&gt; as_tibble() |&gt; filter(family=="Rockwell")
#&gt; # A tibble: 4 × 9
#&gt;   path                      index name  family style weight width italic monos…¹
#&gt;                                    
#&gt; 1 "C:\\WINDOWS\\Fonts\\ROC…     0 Rock… Rockw… Regu… normal norm… FALSE  FALSE  
#&gt; 2 "C:\\WINDOWS\\Fonts\\ROC…     0 Rock… Rockw… Bold  bold   norm… FALSE  FALSE  
#&gt; 3 "C:\\WINDOWS\\Fonts\\ROC…     0 Rock… Rockw… Bold… bold   norm… TRUE   FALSE  
#&gt; 4 "C:\\WINDOWS\\Fonts\\ROC…     0 Rock… Rockw… Ital… normal norm… TRUE   FALSE  
#&gt; # … with abbreviated variable name ¹monospace
register_variant(family = 
  "Rockwell", weight = "semibold")
#&gt; Error: No font with the given family name and weight/width settings available

Created on 2023-03-13 with reprex v2.0.2

David Keyes

March 13, 2023

I'd need to see a little bit more in order to see the full text in the family column. Can you share that?

Blayne Beacham

August 28, 2023

I have another question about what might be possible with . Instead of 'hard-coding' text between the span tags, is it possible to use a variable instead (so the text can be dynamic depending on the data)?

Here is an example of what I am trying to do:

subtitle = paste("According to the average weight by island,", "<span style = 'color: purple;'>Biscoe</span>", "contains the heaviest penguins of the islands surveyed."),

This runs fine, but I would prefer to not 'hard code' in 'Biscoe' and instead use a variable like max_height_island. When I try to do this it just shows up as "max_height_island". I recall from your RMarkdown stuff that you can run some inline stuff with `r but I'm not sure if there is an equivalent here. Any thoughts?

Blayne Beacham

August 28, 2023

Shoot. It looks like the "span" tags got scrubbed when I published the comment. Do you get what I mean?

I basically want to turn one word in a sentence into a different colour (that aligns with the colour I have in the graph) but I want the word to be based on a variable that I create rather than manually typing it in (in this way I can do functions with it to produce a lot of reports/graphs without hard-coding the highlighted name)

David Keyes

August 28, 2023

Pending approval

Yup, you can definitely do this. Here's a quick video explanation.

BTW, on the new website, you can add code chunks (same as you would in RMarkdown) to keep the formatting of code. I fixed your question below so the span shows up.

The Glamour of Graphics

The shape of data

Layout

Typography

Color

Special topics

The Glamour of Graphics

Using custom fonts in R examples and exercises

This lesson is locked

Transcript

Your Turn

Solution

Learn More

Have any questions? Put them below and we will help you out!

Blayne Beacham

David Keyes

Blayne Beacham

David Keyes

soundarya soundararajan

David Keyes

soundarya soundararajan

David Keyes

Blayne Beacham

Blayne Beacham

David Keyes