Shoutout to the old hand who showed me his paper template trick

Last month at the Charlotte AEC meetup, a guy with 40 years in pulled out a physical template he made in 1995 for title blocks. He said he still uses it to sketch concepts before going digital, and it made my own process feel rushed. Do any of you still start a project on paper first?

3 comments

3 Comments

black.beth26d ago

It's the same reason my best ideas still come from a cheap notebook, not a screen.

richard_hayes1726d ago

My buddy's dad was a civil engineer who retired last year. He had this whole drawer of gridded paper pads from the 80s, each sheet pre-stamped with his company's old logo in faded blue ink. Watched him sketch out a drainage fix for his neighbor's yard on one, talking about how the pencil let him think slower. Said the CAD guys at his firm always rushed to the screen and missed the simple stuff. Made my friend completely rethink how he starts his own design work now.

brooke717d ago

Love that story from @richard_hayes17, but it's not just about thinking slower. A pencil on paper forces a different kind of focus. You can't just hit undo, so you commit to a line and follow where it goes. That mistake might lead to a better idea. Screens make everything feel temporary, but paper makes it real. That's what the CAD guys miss, the physical connection to the problem.