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Marks

The building blocks of visuals.

Marks are the atomic building blocks of visuals. They provide primitive shapes whose properties — such as position, size and color — are driven by data.

The marks in a visual can be controlled in the Design sidebar on the right of the UI.

Mark types

Count supports the following mark types:

  • Area

  • Bar

  • Circle

  • Line

  • Square

  • Text

You can select the desired mark type by clicking on the dropdown next to type.

Or, alternatively, if you choose Automatic, Count will select the most appropriate mark based on the data in the visual. (This is the default.)

Channels

Marks can be customised by controlling the various channels attached to them either dynamically from a column of values, or from a single, static value.

When you hover over the design sidebar, a list of columns will appear. You can drag these to the desired property in the mark in order to the .

Or, for some channels like color and size, you can adjust the static value.

The following table shows the channels available for each mark type.

ChannelAreaBarCircleLineSquareText

X

✅

✅

✅

✅

✅

✅

Y

✅

✅

✅

✅

✅

✅

Color

✅

✅

✅

✅

✅

✅

Size

❌

✅

✅

✅

✅

✅

Path

✅

❌

❌

✅

❌

❌

Text/label

✅

✅

✅

✅

✅

✅

Detail

✅

✅

✅

✅

✅

✅

  • X, Y The position of the mark.

  • Color The color of the mark.

  • Size The size of the mark.

  • Path The path a data series follows (only available for area and line marks).

  • Text/Label The column driving the text (for text) or label (for other mark types).

  • Detail Additional fields to group the data by (these do not appear explicitly in the visual but are shown in the tooltip).

Applying functions

By clicking the token, the function applied to the column can be changed (aggregation or, for date columns, date grouping):

Secondary X and Y axes

By default, marks are plotted against an x-axis on the bottom of the visual, and a y-axis on the left. In order to use an x-axis on the top or y-axis on the right of the visual, click the ellipsis next to the channel and select Secondary axis.

Multiple marks

A visual can contain an arbitrary number of marks, with each mark layered on top of the last. In the example below, the line mark is layered on top of the bar mark:

You can use multiple marks to create visuals such as a bar and line chart.

To see how to make a Bar and Line chart, check out this guide:

Mark options

The mark menu contains some additional controls for the mark including:

  • Assigning the mark to a subplot. (Read more about subplots here.)

  • Show/hide mark (shown by default)

  • Show/hide tooltip (shown by default)

  • Stacking (by default enabled for area and bar marks, disabled for others)

Deleting a mark

To delete a mark you can click the - next to the mark. (Note that all visuals must contain at least one mark; the last mark cannot be deleted.)

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