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The R package, dubois, aids users to render Du Bois styled plots from custom datasets.

W.E.B. Du Bois (February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, socialist, historian and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community, and after completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 (Source: Wikpedia).

In the 1900 Paris Exposition his team made a historical display. They presented in many charts the situation of Black people in Georgia and the US in general. The timelessness of these posters provoked the dataviz community and they created challenges to reproduce them using modern tools. The #DuBoisChallenge2022 was the starting point to the dubois package.

The package is under development and has these functions:

  • db_area: creates a vertical area chart with two categories that together amount to 100%.

Installation and loading

Install dubois from GitHub as follows:

if(!require(devtools)) install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("IcaroBernardes/dubois")

Examples 

library(dubois)

data <- dubois::managers %>%
  dplyr::select(race, year, pct_bosses_total) %>%
  tidyr::pivot_wider(names_from = "race",
                     values_from = "pct_bosses_total")

title <- "PARTICIPATION IN MANAGERIAL POSITIONS BY RACE IN BRAZIL."
subtitle <- "INSPIRED BY: W.E.B. DU BOIS | DATA FROM: IBGE | GRAPHIC BY: ICARO BERNARDES"
message <- "IN THE SERIES, USUALLY WHITES OCCUPY SLIGHTLY LESS GENERAL WORK POSITIONS. HOWEVER WHITES OCCUPY WAY MORE MANAGERIAL POSITIONS THAN BLACKS"

dubois::db_area(data = data, order = "year", cat1 = "black", cat2 = "white",
                limits = c(-3,4), path = "man/figures", filename = "managers.png",
                title = title,
                subtitle = subtitle,
                message = message)

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Challenge Posts

Similar packages

  • themedubois: theme_dubois() appplies the Du Bois style to ggplot graphics. It customizes font, colors, grids, legend and so on. While scale_xxxx_duboisx() applies the Du Bois palette to the fill/color of the plot;
  • ggdubois: provides theme, pallete and scale in the Du Bois style. Also adds some geom_xxxx based on some of his posters. Examples are geom_pathspiral and geom_wovenbar.