Horse Breeding Chart

Before the advent of the printing press in the 15th century, the idea of a text being "printable" was synonymous with it being "copyable" by the laborious hand of a scribe. Everything else—the heavy grid lines, the unnecessary borders, the decorative backgrounds, the 3D effects—is what he dismissively calls "chart junk. Its complexity is a living record of its history, a tapestry of Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman influences that was carried across the globe by the reach of an empire. The printable chart, in turn, is used for what it does best: focused, daily planning, brainstorming and creative ideation, and tracking a small number of high-priority personal goals. PDFs, on the other hand, are versatile documents that can contain both text and images, making them a preferred choice for print-ready materials like posters and brochures. It also forced me to think about accessibility, to check the contrast ratios between my text colors and background colors to ensure the content was legible for people with visual impairments.