Process, Print & Pixels: how do the processes of analogue and digital differ, and which is more satisfying?

Continuing The Brand Identity’s partnership with Antalis Creative Power, The A Paper explores the often neglected and undervalued topics within the contemporary graphic design scene. For part one, we investigate the differences between analogue and digital processes; speaking to Jesse Reed, Co-founder of Brooklyn-based design office Order and publisher Standards Manual, London-based designer and artist Sarah Boris, Parisian type designer Morgane VanTorre and Ben Haworth, Co-founder of London-based creative studio Soft Power. What are the differences in processes when tackling something digital and something analogue? Both in creative decision-making and technical operations, the landscapes of both fields are very distinct at first glance, but perhaps their relationship is much more entangled. After all, aren’t most printed publications crafted entirely on the computer, and digital identities are still pitched with a mockup of a business card? The entire digital field has come after print, with the foundations of its aesthetics coming exclusively from the latter, but it is now the platform we all turn to every morning on our phones. How does one affect the other, and is one process more satisfying? “With print, I feel there is a definite commitment to put something out there that must be definite in its physical form,” London-based graphic designer and artist Sarah Boris explains. Driving the “very collaborative” process behind it, Boris remarks how many roles there are behind print production, giving a book as an example. “From the writer, the commissioning editor, the publisher, the sales and marketing team, the distributor, the bookshops and, of course, the designer,” Boris explains, “all of these teams have an impact in the process and in shaping what the final printed work will be.”