No. 4
What the letterpress taught me about mistakes
When every letter is a piece of metal, you learn to slow down before the error, not after it.
On a screen, a typo costs nothing. You press a key and it is gone. On a letterpress, a typo costs you the whole run: re-setting the line, cleaning the ink, wasting the paper.
So you learn a different rhythm. You read the forme backwards and upside down, slowly, out loud. You check before you print, because afterwards is too late.
I do not think digital work should be slower. But I do think we have lost the pause before the commitment, the moment where you look at the thing one more time and ask whether it is right.
A small thing I have been doing since: before I send any file to a client, I close it, make a tea, and open it again. Half the time I find something.