Multi-Panel Figures (Julia)

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Journal figures are composites: lettered panels a–b–c assembled into one exported file, with aligned axes and shared legends. CairoMakie’s Figure + GridLayout system is its strongest feature — panels snap to grid cells, axes link with one call, and section labels are plain Label blocks placed in figure coordinates.

Example

Setup

• System Requirements: Cross-platform (Linux/MacOS/Windows)
• Programming Language: Julia
• Dependencies: CairoMakie, DataFrames, Statistics

using CairoMakie
using DataFrames
using Statistics
using Random
using LinearAlgebra

Data Preparation

We simulate a two-marker cytometry measurement with three populations, reused across the panel layouts.

Random.seed!(211)

n = 3000
pop = rand(1:3, n)
centers = [(-0.5, -0.3), (0.6, 0.5), (1.3, -0.7)]
covs = [Float64[0.14 0.03; 0.03 0.12], Float64[0.10 -0.02; -0.02 0.09],
        Float64[0.12 0.01; 0.01 0.10]]
xy = zeros(n, 2)
for i in 1:n
    L = cholesky(Symmetric(covs[pop[i]])).L
    xy[i, :] = centers[pop[i]] .+ L * randn(2)
end
pop_names = ["P1", "P2", "P3"]
colors = [:seagreen, :steelblue, :tomato]

3-element Vector{Symbol}:
 :seagreen
 :steelblue
 :tomato

Visualization

Linked Two-Panel Composite

Row panels share the x-axis through linkxaxes!; panel letters are Makie Labels pinned to the figure grid — the journal convention.

fig = Figure(size = (500, 430))
ax_a = Axis(fig[1, 1]; ylabel = "CD4 intensity (a.u.)", xticklabelsvisible = false)
ax_b = Axis(fig[2, 1]; ylabel = "CD8 intensity (a.u.)")
for i in 1:3
    scatter!(ax_a, fill(i, count(==(i), pop)), view(xy, pop .== i, 1);
             markersize = 5, color = (colors[i], 0.35), strokewidth = 0)
    scatter!(ax_b, fill(i, count(==(i), pop)), view(xy, pop .== i, 2);
             markersize = 5, color = (colors[i], 0.35), strokewidth = 0)
end
linkxaxes!(ax_a, ax_b)
ax_a.xticks = 1:3; ax_b.xticks = (1:3, pop_names)
Label(fig[1, 1, TopLeft()], "(a) CD4 by population"; fontsize = 12, font = :bold,
      padding = (8, 0, 4, 0))
Label(fig[2, 1, TopLeft()], "(b) CD8 by population"; fontsize = 12, font = :bold,
      padding = (8, 0, 4, 0))
rowgap!(fig.layout, 2)
hidespines!(ax_a, :t, :r)
hidespines!(ax_b, :t, :r)
fig

Figure 1: Two linked panels sharing the population ordering

2×2 Composite with a Spanning Title

Panels can span cells (GridSpec-style) and a column Label serves as the shared legend strip.

fig = Figure(size = (560, 420))
fig[1, 1:2] = Label(fig, "Cytometry summary — 3 populations",
                    fontsize = 14, font = :bold, tellwidth = false)
for (i, marker) in enumerate(["CD4", "CD8"])
    ax = Axis(fig[2, i], title = marker, titlesize = 11)
    for p in 1:3
        subset = view(xy, pop .== p, i)
        hist!(ax, subset; bins = 25, normalization = :pdf,
              color = (colors[p], 0.5), strokewidth = 0)
    end
    hidespines!(ax, :t, :r)
end
elements = [PolyElement(polycolor = colors[p]) for p in 1:3]
Legend(fig[3, 1:2], elements, pop_names; orientation = :horizontal,
       framevisible = false, tellheight = true)
fig

Figure 2: Four-panel composite with a spanning legend strip

References

1. Makie development team. Makie.jl documentation — layouts. https://docs.makie.org/stable/tutorials/layout-tutorial
2. Danisch, S., & Krumbiegel, J. (2021). Makie.jl: Flexible high-performance data visualization for Julia. Journal of Open Source Software, 6(65), 3349.