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composition family

marimekko

Grid where both row and column dimensions are proportional to a quantity.

Combines stacked bars with variable column widths so cell area encodes both dimensions of a 2D distribution (e.g., market segment × geography, with cell area = revenue). Cells often labelled with category names or numbers.

When to use

Two-dimensional composition where both totals (column widths) and shares within (row heights) matter.

When NOT to use

Either dimension is just categorical without a quantity (use heatmap).

Rhetorical roles

  • decompose
  • distribute

Variants & related

Required primitives

  • has_legend
  • has_axis_titles

Optional primitives

  • has_data_labels
  • has_source_note

Common anti-patterns

  • rainbow-palette
  • unreadable-small-cells

Disambiguation rules

  • Variable COLUMN WIDTHS proportional to a quantity (population, revenue) — this is the marimekko signature.
  • Equal-width grid + colour for value = heatmap.
  • Equal-width grid + categorical text in cells = matrix-categorical-coded.