Lists

Anyone who has ever seen the contents of my messenger bag or my notebook knows I’m a manic list maker. While GTD apps like Things are great for running dynamic, intricate, paperless to do lists, there’s nothing more therapeutic when I’m working on a project than writing down everything I need to do on an piece of paper, crossing them all off one-by-one then crumpling the paper up (and recycling it responsibly, obviously).

Design

My design process - for how I best get things done - always starts on paper. I typically take a sizable chunk of time at the start of planning any new design to tease ideas out on paper. Obviously most clients want to see wireframes put together and exported to pdf, but I’ve been lucky with a few smaller jobs that clients can work with me on paper and move from there straight to coding mockups.

Paperwork

Another satisfaction a lot of freelancers know is the sound of the overdue cheque busting through your letterbox and crashing to the floor. While email notifications of bank transfers and the occasional paypal (taking a percentage fail) are still pleasing, there’s nothing quite like holding the reward for weeks or months of hard work.

Letters

A dying art, but I still have a few friends who enjoy sending letters and I’m always more than happy to oblige with a reply. Emails have become entirely disposable, but letters take effort - buying nice paper, making sure you have a good pen to hand, and mentally assembling your remarks as to avoid scribbling out or starting over. Also unlike email you can attach sizable attachments into the gigabytes, so long as you’re equipped with a DVD burner.

So now that we’re well and truely buried in the age of the machine, what is it you still use paper for?