The Beauty of Paper (in the Digital Age)

At the Apple Worldwide Developer’s Conference last week, the iPad app “Paper” won an Apple Design Award. Indeed, it is a beautiful app – check it out here if you haven’t already.

In this digital age, with tablets and smart phones and computers lauded as the way of the future, why do we have such a yearning for paper? Why is it that one of the winners not some revolutionary futuristic metaphor, but rather an app reconnecting us with something thousands of years old?

The fact remains that paper is beautiful. Paper imparts features and an ease of usability that technology simply cannot. The struggle, then, is that digital curation of data (e.g. databases, statistical analysis software, contact management systems, easily-shareable and editable word documents) is so useful that we tend to sacrifice the wonder of paper in exchange for the utility of this structured and useable data. The beauty of this app is that it is able to combine the affordances of paper with digital content curation.

At Captricity likewise, we appreciate  the wonderful affordances of paper too. A special shout to our friend Julian Walker, co-founder of the company behind Paper: Kudos!