Register a set of 4 font weights for use with showtext

Sometimes in a longer document with lots of charts, it's good to limit how much text is very bold and instead make use of semibold font faces. font_add_weights registers a pair of fonts from Google Fonts. They're from the same family, but one will have a typical set of weights (by default, regular = 400 and bold = 700), and the other will have bolder versions (default regular = 600, bold = 900). If a weight is unavailable, nothing will be registered and a message will print with the weights available for that font family.

Usage

font_add_weights(name, regular = 400, semibold = 600, bold = 700, black = 900)

Arguments

name

Name of the font to search in Google Fonts. This function will register one family with this name, and another family with that name appended by "Semibold."

regular

Numeric, defaults 400

semibold

Numeric, defaults 600

bold

Numeric, defaults 700

black

Numeric, defaults 900

Value

Returns nothing, but registers fonts with sysfonts::font_add_google. Call sysfonts::font_families() to confirm that the font family is loaded.

Details

Font weights are from CSS styling, where values are multiples of 100 between 100 and 900. The defaults used here are the norms used in web typography. Not all fonts will be available in all the weights you might like, but many of the fonts on Google that are well suited to data visualization come in many weights.

See also

sysfonts::font_add_google

Examples

if (interactive()) {
library(ggplot2)
font_add_weights("Source Sans 3", black = 800)
showtext::showtext_auto()
ggplot(iris, aes(x = Sepal.Width)) +
  geom_histogram(binwidth = 0.25) +
  facet_wrap(vars(Species), nrow = 1) +
  labs(title = "Font weights in use are 400, 600, and 700",
       subtitle = "Sepal width by species") +
  theme_gray(base_family = "Source Sans 3") +
  theme(plot.title = element_text(family = "Source Sans 3", face = "bold"), # 700
        plot.subtitle = element_text(family = "Source Sans 3 Semibold"), # 600
        strip.text = element_text(family = "Source Sans 3 Semibold")) # 600
}