Set some type in Illustrator. Print it out on a laser printer. Crumple the paper, really manhandle it. Rub it on the sidewalk. Scratch it with the back of an X-acto blade. Now scan it back in. That was the real analogue way I distressed type back in the 1990s.

That analogue look is trendy again. Hand-rendered type, ink textures, visible grain. All in search of “authenticity.”

Elizabeth Goodspeed, writing for It’s Nice That, has a name for what’s actually happening:

But if analogue only matters as a foil to the digital, why are analogue aesthetics being embraced without analogue tools? If the goal is to prove something wasn’t made by AI, faking “realness” on a computer doesn’t really get us anywhere new. It just reflects a different kind of dissonance (call it fauxbi-sabi). Case in point: I noticed that one vendor selling “analogue” Photoshop actions advertises them with the tagline “Save time, focus on being creative”, a promise suspiciously similar to every argument made in favour of AI.

“Fauxbi-sabi” is the whole scam in one word. AI and digital tools made polish free, so imperfection became the new signal for authenticity. But most of the “handmade” work in those trend reports was made in Photoshop with purchased texture packs. Goodspeed again:

You can think of adding in fake ink splatters a bit like penciling in a beauty mark: an intentional imperfection done to signal authenticity, rather than the byproduct of a real nuisance.

The whole essay is sharp, especially the historical parallels. When Kodak made photography easy in 1888, art photographers retreated to difficult, slow processes to prove human involvement. We’re running the same play 138 years later with different tools. The piece is worth reading in full.