Custom Themes & Styling

The "Chart Junk" Problem

Default charts have too much ink: thick borders, unnecessary backgrounds, and redundant gridlines. Data visualization pioneer Edward Tufte argues: Maximize data-ink, minimize non-data-ink.

Cleaning up Matplotlib

# Remove top and right spines
ax.spines['top'].set_visible(False)
ax.spines['right'].set_visible(False)

# Make remaining spines subtle
ax.spines['left'].set_color('#cccccc')
ax.spines['bottom'].set_color('#cccccc')

# Move ticks outside or remove them
ax.tick_params(left=False, bottom=False, labelleft=True, labelbottom=True)

Adding Annotations

Draw attention to specific data points:

ax.annotate('Peak!', xy=(x_max, y_max), 
            xytext=(10, 10), textcoords='offset points',
            arrowprops=dict(arrowstyle='->', color='red'))