No Black Boxes: Proper PDF Redaction

Digital literacy, not aesthetics. How to properly redact a PDF in Adobe Acrobat and Why it Matters

Adobe PDF has been part of my professional life from the beginning. I’ve been a Mac user my entire adult life, and Adobe tools have been with me since my early days as a graphic illustrator working in FreeHand.

These tools were never about aesthetics. They were built to replicate physical, human processes in a digital world. Authorship. Version control. Seals. Redaction.

If you’ve worked inside them long enough, you know where to look.

That’s why it’s troubling that we’re living in a moment where a federal agency released a document so poorly redacted that it could be reconstructed through crowdsourcing on social media.

Adobe PDF may be frustrating, but it remains the system of record.

This is not a design literacy issue.It’s a digital literacy issue.

Download Instructions to Properly Redact a PDF

Proper PDF Redaction Matters.pdf

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