The book "Data Visualization with R" by Rahlf (2017) inspired me to write the small package prepplot: its intention is to reduce the effort needed for creating a customized plotting environment for base graphics, e.g. with colored backgrounds, colored stripes instead of grid lines for orientation, and so forth. See the package vignette for detail. A brief cheat sheet explains important base R graphics parameters, annotation functions and key features from prepplot.