previous fontsize settings in plot now produce huge fonts

edit

It's not a one-liner and not particularly elegant, but you can just wrap another layer around plot to put in another default.

def plot(*args,**kwargs):
    if "axes_labels_size" not in kwargs:
        # perhaps we should copy kwargs before modifying it?
        kwargs['axes_labels_size']=1.0
    return sage.plot.plot.plot(*args,**kwargs)

A slight architectural change to more easily accommodate requests like yours would be to rewrite sage.plot.graphics to initialize default values from a dictionary rather than in code. Then one could relatively easily monkey-patch the dictionary.

[I originally put this answer under the wrong question]