Line, bar and pie charts – an overview

What can this template do?

Line charts, bar charts and pie charts excel at visually representing data, providing valuable insights into patterns, comparisons, and proportions.

Our Line, bar and pie template is an essential tool that enables you to visualize everything from ranking to distribution, from magnitude to change over time and parts to a whole.

If you’re not sure what your data is showing or how best to visualize it, loading it into this template and trying out different chart types is a great first step.

Adding your data

1

The first thing you need is a CSV or Excel file of your data.

Make sure that there’s a column containing labels or times for each instance of data, like years or Premier League football teams.

In a line, bar or area chart, these will become the values or categories along the X axis. In a pie or donut chart, they’ll become the slices.

2

In the Chart type settings, you can choose between a host of different types of visualizations. Let's stick with Line chart.

Aggregation mode specifies how values with the same label and facet should be aggregated. Sum specifies that values with the same label and facet are summed, Average calculates their mean, and Count just counts them. None does no aggregation at all.

3

By default, Flourish picks the column containing labels/date data automatically, but you can easily change this on the Select columns to visualise panel in the Data tab.

4

The default Line, bar, pie data is structured in a wide data format. Here is an example:

Year	London	Paris	Berlin
2010	1	4	3
2020	0	3	6

However, if you need to use the Charts grid or Row filter column bindings, your data may need to change to a long format instead.

Fortunately, you can do this directly in Flourish – read more about this here.  

Colors, lines and labels

5

Once you've added your data, you should be able to see a preview of your chart in the bottom right corner. If you switch back into the Preview tab now, you can tweak the styles of your chart.

6

In the Colors settings, you can set colors for the whole chart or specify them individually for each line.

You can find out more about color and palettes in Flourish here. If you want to color an individual bar or line, please read this help document.

NOTE: It is super easy to add dashed lines to your chart - head here for a detailed breakdown!

For shading between lines, turn on the Shading areas between lines option, and then specify each area to be shaded by the pair or line names that contain it, separated by :: .

You can find out more about how to shade areas between lines in a line chart, here.

7

To customize the lines, head to the Lines, dots and areas settings.

There, you can change the line width, opacity and also add an optional outline, when the lines overlap. Moreover, it is possible to choose between different line curve styles.

It is also possible to add and customize optional dots.

Auto will enable dots while avoiding overlaps, On will enable dots for all data points, Final dot only will add visual emphasis only to the last data point, and Off will turn all dots off.

Moreover, you can change the opacity, radius or make them hollow, while it is also possible to specify the final dot scale to draw emphasis to them.

8

Flourish also enables you to add and extensively customize line and data point labels.

You can find detailed instructions for the different label options here.

To customize the default axis titles or your own, we offer extensive guidance in this help doc.  

TIP: Are some of the Y axis tick labels getting hidden? Read here on how to rectify this.

Axis settings, legend and text 

9

Let's move to the X and Y axis settings.

To edit the color, sizing, spacing, and number of the ticks and labels, please head here.

The minimum and maximum of your axes are also customizable, as outlined here.

For X and Y axis titles, please read here.

10

To add a prefix or a suffix and to format the number, head to the Number formatting settings.

You can add a prefix or a suffix to the number values by entering them into the Prefix and Suffix text boxes.

You can find detailed instructions on the rest of the number formatting options, here.

11

Axis annotations are an extremely useful tool for adding depth to your data storytelling.

To achieve that, head to the annotations settings.

You can add line or range highlights and customize their styling. Read this help document for a detailed explanation.

You can find detailed instructions on the rest of the number formatting options, here.

11

Flourish enables you to add and customize a legend for your chart.

Please read here for the different options and settings controlling Flourish legends.

TIP: Do you want to hide certain categories from your legend? Fret not, we cover this topic extensively.

12

Want to add a header, a subtitle and a footer, or multiple ones?

Flourish enables you to extensively style them, add links, change the alignment, font and many more.

Please head to this help document for a deep dive on all things header and footer.

TIP: For more tips on which chart type to choose for your data, head over to this help doc.