Stata graphs: Get those fonts right

In the world of data visualizations an enormous amount of thinking has gone into defining what constitutes good infographics. At the end of the day, visualizations need to communicate a story in an aesthetically pleasing way and in order to achieve this, various elements like colors and fonts need to fit together neatly.

In the world of Stata graphs, fonts are often an overlooked feature, even though the software provides the functionality to fully customize and utilize them.

This guide aims to introduce the basics of fonts usage in Stata and provides a step-by-step guide on how to incorporate them in your graphs. Here, we will learn how to go from this default graph:

to this figure below:

Background

Font are an essential part of data visualizations, and several online guides discuss them in detail. For a quick background, this Medium post provides a good introduction: