# Plot design reproduction exercise: Playfair's Wheat and Wages

**URL:** <https://talk.observablehq.com/t/plot-design-reproduction-exercise-playfairs-wheat-and-wages/8107>\
**Category:** Show and tell\
**Created:** [July 19, 2023, 5:10pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/plot-design-reproduction-exercise-playfairs-wheat-and-wages/8107 "2023-07-19T17:10:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jwoLondon](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/jwolondon/32/259_2.png) [@jwoLondon](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/jwoLondon)\
**Post date:** [July 19, 2023, 5:10pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/plot-design-reproduction-exercise-playfairs-wheat-and-wages/8107/1 "2023-07-19T17:10:48Z")

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I’ve been learning to use Plot in the last couple of months and one exercise I find useful when learning a visualisation system is to reproduce an existing design. Selecting historical designs can be particularly helpful as it often forces one to be explicit design choices rather than rely on system defaults.

Following a fine tradition (e.g. ProtoVis, VegaLite, R) , I thought I’d try Playfair’s [Wheat and Wages chart](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chart_Showing_at_One_View_the_Price_of_the_Quarter_of_Wheat,_and_Wages_of_Labour_by_the_Week,_from_1565_to_1821.png) with Plot.

Here’s a [page documenting my attempt](https://observablehq.com/@jwolondon/wheat-and-wages). If any of the more experienced Plotters have suggestions for improvements, especially in simplifying the code, they’d be very welcome.

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**Author:** ![eagereyes](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/eagereyes/32/6255_2.png) [@eagereyes](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/eagereyes)\
**Post date:** [July 19, 2023, 5:24pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/plot-design-reproduction-exercise-playfairs-wheat-and-wages/8107/2 "2023-07-19T17:24:11Z")

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Wow, nicely done!