The Letter's Comeback - The Discovery of Deceleration
The importance of decelerating increases, the faster our lives and society become. You need to take time and find peace and quiet to write a letter.
Now is the ideal opportunity to use the slower time presented to us to put pen to paper and give the people we love and have not been able to see for a long time the attention they deserve through a hand-written letter.
It is also the perfect time to dive into old letters from the family archive or study the lives of historical personalities through their letter exchanges, giving them a new lease of life.
Paper has been a messaging medium, transporting intellectual content and feelings, for many hundreds of years. It is a timeless, classic medium. Paper also determine how messages “feel” in the truest sense of the word: perhaps, raw, smooth, structured, classy or cheap. As a result, there is a message hidden not only within the text drafted but also in the material used to carry it.
Paper retains the written word, makes it tangible, easy to touch and permanent. Another advantage of paper is that it is bio-degradable. A letter forces the writer to think in a structured way and to formulate expression – there is no quick fix as on a computer.
Back in 2010, the German scientist Rüdiger Safranski, the co-moderator of the ORF television programme "Das philosophische Quartett" (the Philosophical Quartet) described how he believed that the very slowness of old-fashioned letter writing was a chance for a comeback in old-style postal exchanges as a form of communication:
„The pressure to reply quickly is no longer present. The letter is making a comeback, in direct contrast to quick email communication. The letter’s chance lies in the culture of distance between sending and receiving. This increases the joy and excitement. It leads to a deceleration, intensity and mindfulness, also when reading. You don’t need to answer it immediately.“
– Rüdiger Safranski in "Das philosophische Quartett", ORF programme 2010
Further information about our range of writing paper with numerous examples and ideas about printing and embossing can be found in the following link.