Film cameras, vinyl and postcards: Embracing analog in a digital world

“You have the one shot, and if it looks silly, sorry. But that only, to me, adds to the charm of it,” Jason Diamond, a Brooklyn-based writer, says, pointing out that physical photos are a permanent item that the user gets to hold on to. “There’s no app. It takes you away from the algorithm, and it takes you away from having to do everything online.”

The use of film cameras has grown among young people. Sax says his young daughter recently asked for a type of film camera that was popular long before she was born.

Sending letters and postcards

Receiving a letter or postcard can be a glimmer of joy in one’s mailbox. Sending them can be gratifying, too. Flea markets and op shops are littered with old postcards, relaying the sender’s trip to Acapulco or Paris to a loved one. Between the texts, voice notes, phone calls, FaceTimes, Instagram DMs and Snapchats, the letter or postcard can invite a playfulness in its limitations: a scribbled-out word, a pen smudge, a stamp from a faraway land.

“Analog affords accident in a way that I really appreciate,” said Elizabeth Goodspeed, a designer and critic. “It allows you to delve into a deeper, more intuitive way of engaging with the world.”

As Diamond writes in his newsletter The Melt, sending and receiving letters is deeply personal. “I always put it away in hopes that someday it’ll have a deeper meaning for some reason to people that didn’t know me or the person who wrote it,” he writes.

Print books and magazines

A reader of strictly printed books will argue that nothing compares to the feeling of a physical book in one’s hands. You can dog-ear pages, fold back the cover, gauge how far along you are and fill up your bookshelves. In fact, Gen Z readers frequent libraries and generally prefer physical books to e-books.

Magazines are also sticking around; in the past two years, nearly 200 new magazines have launched. Part of the appeal is the lasting impact of magazines. Diamond found old issues of Popeye, a Japanese men’s magazine, at a vintage store. “Some Japanese men’s magazine from 1984 somehow can influence me in 2023,” he says.

Full-bleed photos, varied fonts and colourful illustrations contribute to a different experience in print than on a screen. Pages from magazines can be used for creating vision boards and collaging on large pieces of poster board or in a journal.

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There’s also creative value in the tactile nature of the magazine. “Physical things have a lot more decisions that had to be made to create them,” Goodspeed says. “There’s a real difference between reading Interview magazine, which is huge, and reading Reader’s Digest, which is small.”

While she usually makes digital mood boards for her clients, Goodspeed says she enjoys making physical mood boards because the scale – not constricted by a screen – “allows them to be more immersive and powerful,” creating “new moments of synchronicity or intrigue.” She adds that the materials used for mood boarding are important: “What does a piece of matte cardstock evoke that’s different from a page ripped out of a glossy magazine?”

Vinyl records

For millennials, streaming music was a welcome improvement on the age of burning CDs and illegal downloads. But for many, a physical record, a displayed turntable and a full album on deck hold appeal. You can cede control with a vinyl record; you don’t have to worry about queuing up the next song or constructing a perfect playlist.

Diamond, a longtime devotee of vinyl records, says he used to “schlep crates of records” to various DJ gigs. “There’s this beautiful little pop, and you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s something real happening here,’” he says. “It’s still electronic, but it’s a little more simple. And I think at heart, we all crave simplicity.”

Pens and stationery

An awareness of screen time – even short tasks like jotting down to-do lists – has led people to reconsider the power of pen and paper. On TikTok, the hashtag #stationeryaddict has nearly 800 million views, and a large subsection of the platform is focused on how to utilise planners and calendars, organise a desk with sticky notes and staplers, and sample new pens.

Sax says that he will almost always start a project with pen and paper and move to typing it on a computer once the key elements are in place. He recently began a new book project and found that physical paper provided the space he needed to plan.

“I wrote out different ideas, locations and themes, and all these different components that I had to do,” he says. “And I arranged it in my backyard on a table. That gave me this idea of an outline and it was this physical manifestation of it.”

Collecting

Collecting doesn’t just apply to expensive antiques or art. Satisfaction can be found in pocketing a matchbook, a bookmark or a little postcard that comes with the bill at the restaurant.

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Goodspeed regularly collects ephemera from her daily life, travels and special occasions, as well as records and secondhand books. She says physical items with an interesting font, shape or illustration spark inspiration for her and connect her to “the past lives of the object”.

“I think what I really enjoy about the analog is how many clues there are. I love buying a record and someone has circled a song lyric,” Goodspeed says. She enjoys physical books, particularly used books, because of the many hands they pass through before they reach her. “I feel very connected to the past lives of this object and the past lives of the people who had this object,” she says.

A few important tips for first-time collectors: don’t be afraid to throw things away, says Goodspeed. “I’m intuitive and not precious about what I take, and I’m also intuitive and not precious about what I get rid of.” Pick something small that’s not going to take up a lot of space – like matchbooks or bookmarks. And, she says, be sure to showcase these items proudly.

Incorporating analog technology and practices – a walk to the post office to mail a letter or an afternoon spent sifting through secondhand records – may seem like a waste of time. But Sax argues that these small difficulties are part of the human experience that makes life interesting. While maximising efficiency and optimisation is not necessarily bad, “humans thrive on, and get the most enjoyment out of, friction and things that are tricky and difficult and don’t make sense,” Sax says. In a world of electricity, why do we still light candles in our homes?

“Candles are lovely,” Sax says. “It’s entirely illogical and it’s totally wasteful and we should have no reason for doing this in an optimised world – but it just feels nice.”

This article originally appeared in The Washington Post.

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