Introducing ggpattern - pattern fills for ggplot

2020-04-01

ggpattern

ggpattern provides custom ggplot2 geoms which support filled areas with geometric and image-based patterns.

Reading the articles/vignettes on the package website is probably the best way to get started.

Feature Summary

  • Custom versions of (almost) all the geoms from ggplot2 which have a region which can be filled.
  • A suite of aesthetics for controlling the pattern appearance (e.g. pattern_alpha)
  • The ability to include user-defined patterns

Installation

You can install the development version from GitHub with:

# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("coolbutuseless/ggpattern")

Quickstart

  1. Take an existing plot which contains a geom with a fillable area e.g geom_col().
  2. Use the {ggpattern} version of the geom e.g. ggpattern::geom_col_pattern() instead of ggplot2::geom_col()
  3. Set the aesthetic pattern to your choice of pattern e.g pattern = 'stripe', and set other options using pattern_* aesthetics
df <- data.frame(level = c("a", "b", "c", 'd'), outcome = c(2.3, 1.9, 3.2, 1))

ggplot(df) +
  geom_col_pattern(
    aes(level, outcome, pattern_fill = level), 
    pattern = 'stripe',
    fill    = 'white',
    colour  = 'black'
  ) +
  theme_bw(18) +
  theme(legend.position = 'none') + 
  labs(
    title    = "ggpattern::geom_pattern_col()",
    subtitle = "pattern = 'stripe'"
  ) +
  coord_fixed(ratio = 1/2)