Question

I am plotting some graphs for a poster and a slideshow. I need bigger points and bigger text. I read about ggplot2’s theme_set and theme_update. From what I can tell there are only two preset themes and they differ by the color arrangement of the background. However, I want to make all the text bigger and the plotted points bigger.

I learned how to change the font size.

theme_update(axis.text.x=theme_text(size=30))  

But that only changes the axis text. I would have to do the same thing for a bunch of other parameters (axis.text.y, axis.title.x etc). Call me “lazy” but I want a single commands that can increase the base size for all text (and preferably the plotted points too). Is there one or two commands that covers all parameters? Alternatively are there any other set themes?

Answer 1

If you are fine with the colors of either of the two default themes, both take an argument of a base size for text. This is carried over to all the text around the plot (with scaling). You can just add theme_gray(30) to your plots. One caveat to that. If you afterward set other parameters of text with them_text, you have to respecify the size.

Alternatively, you can take the code for theme_gray (or theme_bw, whichever is closer) and make any thematic changes directly there. For examples of how to do that, check the ggplot2 wiki: https://github.com/hadley/ggplot2/wiki/Themes

EDIT:

As an example:

library("ggplot2")

qplot(1:2,1:2) + theme_bw(30)