I always, since I started in advertising, did a lot of print. In fact, if I didn't worry about making money and moving up within agencies, I would have been happy being a print copywriter.
There was something special about print before digital came around. Something more careful somehow. Primarily I think this had to do with what was a cumbersome process of setting and getting type and making sure it looked good and fit in the ad. A last minute client change meant a mechanical artist had to go into the repro type and with the writer sitting over his shoulder, had to construct words out of the type that was already there. This was dangerous. Because type was simply glued onto mechanicals in those days. If you monkeyed with it, it could fall off along the way and you'd really be in a pickle.
What I miss--in addition to the labor I described above--is that the door closed on things. Things were done.
I can't help but feeling that in our digital age--in which changes can be made with such ease, we actually make more changes. And many of those changes which we can now so easily make are done at the whim and caprice of someone either without the confidence and/or brains to resist making changes for changes sake.
Well, it ain't never coming back.
But I miss it.
