Vertical bar chart
Single-series vertical bar chart for ranked categorical comparison, small N.
bar-vertical compares discrete categories using the height of rectangular bars. It honours sort, sortMode, valueLabels, and valueLabelPosition. The alias vertical-bar is registered against the same renderer so .bpc documents can read either way.
When to use
- Comparing quantities across a small number of categories (< 12)
- Ranking items when the category labels are short enough to fit horizontally
- A few data points over time (e.g. annual totals for 5 years)
When NOT to use
- Continuous data distributions (no built-in histogram type)
- Many time periods — use
linefor trends - Long category labels that would need rotation — use
bar-horizontal
Example
bpc
chart bar-vertical {
title = "Brazil produces more coffee than the next three countries combined"
description = "Million 60-kg bags, 2023/24 crop year"
source = "International Coffee Organization"
sourceUrl = "https://ico.org"
colorPalette = "Harvey"
valueLabels = true
valueLabelPosition = "auto"
data {
"Brazil" = 66.4
"Vietnam" = 29
"Colombia" = 11.4
"Indonesia" = 9.9
"Ethiopia" = 8.7
"Honduras" = 6.3
}
colorize "Brazil" {
color = "#a4432d"
}
transform sort {
column = "value"
direction = descending
}
}Common pitfalls
- Truncating the y-axis exaggerates differences and misleads readers — always start at zero
- Too many categories create visual clutter; group small ones into "Other"
- 3D effects distort the encoding — Blueprint Chart doesn't offer them, and you shouldn't fake them
Related types
bar-horizontal— when labels are long or you want a ranked listbar-multi— when you need to compare two or more series side by sidebar-stacked— when the parts of each bar sum to a meaningful total