How can we make xkcd style graphs?

Thinking along the same line as some of the other answers, I've "un-ggplotted" the chart and also added on the flexibility of the x-axis label locations (which seems to be common in xkcd) and an arbitrary label on the chart.

Note that I had a few issues with loading the Humor Sans font and manually downloaded it to working directory.

And the code...

library(ggplot2) library(extrafont) ### Already have read in fonts (see previous answer on how to do this) loadfonts() ### Set up the trial dataset data <- NULL data$x <- seq(1, 10, 0.1) data$y1 <- sin(data$x) data$y2 <- cos(data$x) data$xaxis <- -1.5 data <- as.data.frame(data) ### XKCD theme theme_xkcd <- theme( panel.background = element_rect(fill="white"), axis.ticks = element_line(colour=NA), panel.grid = element_line(colour="white"), axis.text.y = element_text(colour=NA), axis.text.x = element_text(colour="black"), text = element_text(size=16, family="Humor Sans") ) ### Plot the chart p <- ggplot(data=data, aes(x=x, y=y1))+ geom_line(aes(y=y2), position="jitter")+ geom_line(colour="white", size=3, position="jitter")+ geom_line(colour="red", size=1, position="jitter")+ geom_text(family="Humor Sans", x=6, y=-1.2, label="A SIN AND COS CURVE")+ geom_line(aes(y=xaxis), position = position_jitter(h = 0.005), colour="black")+ scale_x_continuous(breaks=c(2, 5, 6, 9), labels = c("YARD", "STEPS", "DOOR", "INSIDE"))+labs(x="", y="")+ theme_xkcd ggsave("xkcd_ggplot.jpg", plot=p, width=8, height=5) 

Basic line-drawing function:

xkcd_line <- function(x, y, color) { len <- length(x); rg <- par("usr"); yjitter <- (rg[4] - rg[3]) / 1000; xjitter <- (rg[2] - rg[1]) / 1000; x_mod <- x + rnorm(len) * xjitter; y_mod <- y + rnorm(len) * yjitter; lines(x_mod, y_mod, col='white', lwd=10); lines(x_mod, y_mod, col=color, lwd=5); } 

Basic axis:

xkcd_axis <- function() {   rg <- par("usr");   yaxis <- 1:100 / 100 * (rg[4] - rg[3]) + rg[3];   xaxis <- 1:100 / 100 * (rg[2] - rg[1]) + rg[1];   xkcd_line(1:100 * 0 + rg[1] + (rg[2]-rg[1])/100, yaxis,'black')   xkcd_line(xaxis, 1:100 * 0 + rg[3] + (rg[4]-rg[3])/100, 'black') } 

And sample code:

data <- data.frame(x=1:100) data$one <- exp(-((data$x - 50)/10)^2) data$two <- sin(data$x/10) plot.new() plot.window( c(min(data$x),max(data$x)), c(min(c(data$one,data$two)),max(c(data$one,data$two)))) xkcd_axis() xkcd_line(data$x, data$one, 'red') xkcd_line(data$x, data$two, 'blue') 

Produces:

Here's an attempt at the fonts, based on links from the xkcd forums and the extrafont package:

As noted above there is a forum discussion about fonts on the xkcd site: I grabbed the first one I could find, there may be other (better?) options (@jebyrnes posts another source for possible fonts in comments above -- the TTF file is here; someone reported a 404 error for that source, you might alternatively try here or here, substituting those URLs appropriately for xkcdFontURL below; you may have to work a bit harder to retrieve the Github-posted links)

 xkcdFontURL <- "http://simonsoftware.se/other/xkcd.ttf" download.file(xkcdFontURL,dest="xkcd.ttf",mode="wb") 

(This is for quickie, one-off use: for regular use you should put it in some standard system font directory.)

 library(extrafont) 

The most useful information about fonts was on the extrafont github site -- this is taken from there

font_import(".") ## because we downloaded to working directory loadfonts() 

Example taken more or less verbatim from the github site:

library(ggplot2) p <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(x=wt, y=mpg)) + geom_point() + ggtitle("Fuel Efficiency of 32 Cars") + xlab("Weight (x1000 lb)") + ylab("Miles per Gallon") + theme(text=element_text(size=16, family="xkcd")) ggsave("xkcd_ggplot.pdf", plot=p, width=4, height=4) ## needed for Windows: ## Sys.setenv(R_GSCMD = "C:/Program Files/gs/gs9.05/bin/gswin32c.exe") embed_fonts("xkcd_ggplot.pdf") 

I designed a xkcd themed analytics calendar just using RStudio. Here is an example of bar plot xkcd style

• Font used = HumorSans.ttf [link given above]
• Package used [xkcd]

To generate this plot

Here is the code used

#using packages xkcd, ggplot library(xkcd) library(ggplot2) font_import(pattern="[H/h]umor") loadfonts() ### Set up the trial dataset d1 <- data.frame('type'=c('DROWNING','RADIATION','TOILET',"ELECTRICAL",'NOISE','PANTRY','YOUR FALLING ON OBJECTS','OBJECTS FALLING ON YOU','BOSS','FIRE','TRAVEL TO WORK'),'score'=c(2,2,3,6,6,6,11,14,21,26,30)) # we will keep adding layers on plot p. first the bar plot p <- NULL p <- ggplot() + xkcdrect(aes(xmin = type-0.1,xmax= type+0.1,ymin=0,ymax =score), d1,fill= "#D55E00", colour= "#D55E00") + geom_text(data=d1,aes(x=type,y=score+2.5,label=score,ymax=0),family="Humor Sans") + coord_flip() #hand drawn axes d1long <- NULL d1long <- rbind(c(0,-2),d1,c(12,32)) d1long$xaxis <- -1 d1long$yaxis <- 11.75 # drawing jagged axes p <- p + geom_line(data=d1long,aes(x=type,y=jitter(xaxis)),size=1) p <- p + geom_line(data=d1long,aes(x=yaxis,y=score), size=1) # draw axis ticks and labels p <- p + scale_x_continuous(breaks=seq(1,11,by=1),labels = data$Type) + scale_y_continuous(breaks=NULL) #writing stuff on the graph t1 <- "GOOGLE RESULTS" p <- p + annotate('text',family="Humor Sans", x=12.5, y=12, label=t1, size=6) # XKCD theme p <- p + theme(panel.background = element_rect(fill="white"), panel.grid = element_line(colour="white"),axis.text.x = element_blank(), axis.text.y = element_text(colour="black"),text = element_text(size=18, family="Humor Sans") ,panel.grid.major = element_blank(),panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),panel.border = element_blank(),axis.title.y = element_blank(),axis.title.x = element_blank(),axis.ticks = element_blank()) print(p) 

This is a very, very rough start and only covers (partially) the hand-drawn look and feel of the lines. It would take a little bit of work to automate this but adding some AR(1) noise to the response function could make it seem slightly hand drawn

set.seed(551) x <- seq(0, 1, length.out = 1000) y <- sin(x) imperfect <- arima.sim(n = length(y), model = list(ar = c(.9999))) imperfect <- scale(imperfect) z <- y + imperfect*.005 plot(x, z, type = "l", col = "blue", lwd = 2) 

Here is my take on the lines with ggplot2 using some of the code from above:

ggplot()+geom_line(aes(x=seq(0,1,length.out=1000),y=sin(x)),position=position_jitter(width=0.02),lwd=1.5,col="white")+ geom_line(aes(x=seq(0,1,length.out=1000),y=sin(x)),position=position_jitter(width=0.004),lwd=1.4,col="red")+ geom_line(aes(x=seq(0,1,length.out=1000),y=cos(x)),position=position_jitter(width=0.02),lwd=1.5,col="white")+ geom_line(aes(x=seq(0,1,length.out=1000),y=cos(x)),position=position_jitter(width=0.004),lwd=1.4,col="blue")+ theme_bw()+theme(panel.grid.major=element_blank(),panel.grid.minor=element_blank()) 

Not sure how to replace the axes, but could use the same approach with jitter. Then it's a matter of importing the font from XKCD and layering with geom_text.