Picture Perfect: Adding Images to Your Viz Part 2

Last time we covered adding an image to your dashboard. This week we're going to look at another way of adding images to your viz - using custom shapes.

This viz uses custom shapes of men and women.

We've got data on bank failures, so we're going to use money bag image to represent those banks. If you'd like to follow along, download the money bag image and the dataset here .

1. To start, navigate to "My Documents" and find your "My Tableau Repository" folder using Windows Explorer.
2. Within "My Tableau Repository", open the "Shapes" Folder.
3. Create a new folder within the shapes folder. This new folder is where your custom shapes will live. For this example, create a new folder called "Moneybags".
4. Then paste the money bag image into the "Moneybags" folder.
5. Open up Tableau Public and connect to the bank failures dataset.
6. Double click on State to draw a map. The rest of the steps are illustrated in this video.

And here are the steps in the video written out.

1. Change the drop-down menu on the Marks shelf to say "Shape".
2. Drag a copy of State to the Shape shelf.
3. Then in the shape legend select Edit shapes.
4. In the dialog box, click "Reload Shapes".
5. Then use the drop-down menu to select the "Moneybags" shape palette.
6. Click "Assign Palette". You'll get a warning, just click yes and continue.
7. Then click OK to close out the dialog box. And now you're looking at a map with custom shapes.
8. For bonus points, add Number of Records to the size shelf to change the size of your money bags based on how many banks failed in that state.

That's how you add custom shapes to your viz. Next time we'll go over how to use background images.