Using Google fonts with ggplot2

Continuing with the concepts around beautifying visualizations, here is a quick sample around using Google fonts along with ggplot2.

The changes to graphics output with a range of fonts is pretty remarkable and impactful. The below chart drives home the point!

The code for generating the chart above is:

## load rtweet package
library(rtweet)

# credit: https://cran.rstudio.com/web/packages/showtext/vignettes/introduction.html
# install.packages("showtext")

# credit: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34522732/changing-fonts-in-ggplot2
library(showtext)
## Loading Google fonts (https://fonts.google.com/)
font_add_google("Gochi Hand", "gochi")
font_add_google("Schoolbell", "bell")


# to get over issues mentioned at https://cran.rstudio.com/web/packages/showtext/vignettes/introduction.html
quartz()


## Automatically use showtext to render text
showtext_auto()

## search for 18000 tweets using the rstudioconf2020 hashtag
rt <- search_tweets(
  "#rstudioconf2020", n = 18000, include_rts = FALSE
)



## plot time series of tweets
rt %>%
  ts_plot("3 hours") +
  ggplot2::theme_minimal() +
  ggplot2::theme(plot.title = ggplot2::element_text(face = "bold")) +
  ggplot2::labs(
    x = NULL, y = NULL,
    title = "Frequency of #rstudioconf2020 Twitter statuses from past 9 days",
    subtitle = "Twitter status (tweet) counts aggregated using three-hour intervals",
    caption = "\nSource: Data collected from Twitter's REST API via rtweet"
  ) + 
  theme(text=element_text(size=16,  family="gochi"))