The young man pictured here comes to us courtesy of the Mary Degnan Archives. (Mary was inspired to re-examine a box of old photos after seeing her work on this particular subject matter here at Tonsil a month ago.) This picture was taken in the spring of 1987, when I was 18 and a freshman at Loyola University in New Orleans.

Don’t be afraid of the dilated stare and the sharp knife — it’s just another Wednesday production night at the offices of the Maroon. I was good with an X-acto.

I miss layout. It was probably the only crafty, tactile skill I ever mastered — starting in the journalism room in high school. I miss the waxer, the long strips of freshly developed type set in column inches, the bordertape, the pica poles, the photo reduction-ratio wheels, mitering my corners, the Zip-o-Tone Zip-a-Tone [thanks, Nancy], the 20-percent gray screen half-tones, the light-tables; writing headlines from count orders (”they need a 3-36-1 in 19-pica column width, and don’t forget that flitj only counts for half a character”). I miss the monstrous and cantankerous photostat machine. I miss light blue Copy-Not pens. I miss being able to fix a typo with a knife instead of a reset.

I miss the satisfaction of moving the page flats over to the “finished” side of the boards, where we would burnish them silly and would then hold them up to the light and put masking tape behind the stray X-acto nicks. I miss piling into Tim Watson’s car to drive the flats down to Dixie-Web press off Tchoupitoulas Street at 3 a.m. (Or 4 a.m. Five a.m., on really bad weeks.) I even miss the heartbreak of seeing the paper 24 hours later and noticing all the bad nicks and crooked lines.

All of those skills are now completely obsolete.

I think I derived the same joy from laying out a newspaper that quilters derive from quilting bees. It required concentration, measurement, technique, artistry — but it never distracted you from conversations and gossip and laughs with your collaborators. No matter what sort of worries I had in life (it seems unthinkable to me that I had any worries in 1987, but of course I did), there was nothing more gratifying than a long, hard night of layout, with WTUL on the radio (or a mix tape). The paper came out Friday mornings. We’d close (or try to close) the features and op-ed pages on Tuesday nights, and then the news and editorial pages on Wednesdays — as late as it took, but our printer deadline was technically midnight. We’d usually get the flats there by 3 a.m.

(These pictures, from somebody else’s newsroom backshop, sort of dial the time machine a little too far in reverse, but you’ll get the idea.)

The beginning of the end.

Around the same time Mary took that knife-in-mouth picture of me, we started converting from Compugraphic typesetting machines to the newfangled Apple Macintosh Plus computers (with 80 MB hard drives!). Although Loyola’s Apple team insisted we’d be able to entirely paginate the paper, no sweat, it was something of a disaster for many semesters. We had to cobble together a system on a flimsy “Apple-Talk” network, by which we “typeset” our stories into columns using a “laser” printer. As production manager that semester, I started tentatively experimenting with building boxes, column sigs, and folios on the screen, using Aldus PageMaker or MacDraw.

Laying out a page (or a poster or a book jacket or a brochure) on the screen also has its pleasures — as millions of present-day graphic designers in all forms of media will attest. But it’s hard to match the feeling of laying something out by hand. I guess this is really just more nostalgia for the idea of slowness, craft, the physicality of media.

Not just a bit phallic, eh?

I wish I could start a Layout Club, for people of a certain age who used to love doing this. We could be like those people who rebuild old video game consoles and whatever else. We would banish all forms of desktop publishing technology prior to 1985. We could hunt down and restore an actual typesetting terminal and developer. We could cobble together some waxers, X-acto knives, other supplies; find or build light-tables and boards. We could meet in someone’s garage. We could put music on and just run out type and lay out a newspaper that would never even have to get to printed. We would miter corners and do color-separation flips. Mostly we would just trade stories and laugh and go home and discover stray strands of “Harvard-rule” border tape in our hair.

Does that sound like a fun time or what? I’ll bet hipsters would love it, just for the retro feel.

I got into newspapers in high school because I liked the way they look. In college, I chose writing and editing over design, but two decades later I keep wondering if I made the right choice.

We’ve been attempting a bit of visual branding with some of my longer reviews/essays about television in the Style section. This means deeper thoughts (haha) and most of all, Better Art. I’ve been loving these illos that we hired graphic artist Owen Freeman to do for Treme, Betty White, and my piece on mockumentaries. They give off a bit of an Alex Ross graphic novel realism …

What do you think? I think they’re sharp and nicely distant, almost spooky. Anything is better than canned art from wires and network publicity depts. Freeman is 5,000 x better.

This is one of the great benefits of the print product. For a variety of technical issues (and excuses) and freelancer legalese (I think?), these illos don’t ever make it online. I know the iPad age is upon us, so I hope to actually live to see the day when the Washington Post website (or app) is anywhere near as elegant to look at as the newspaper is.

The Washington Post, my employer, is launching a redesign on Monday. It’s not an extreme makeover by any stretch, but it will be enough to get some readers upset, I guarantee. Already there’s been some kvetchin’ about the Sunday Magazine, which was the first to walk around in its new heels and new hairstyle. Erik Wemple of City Paper has all the analysis you need about that — the real change isn’t so much the look of the magazine as the end of an era of 8,000-word features.

Erik, ever astute, also noticed our revamped Weather page, which launched a few days early (though I wager that the type styles on it will change on Monday).

Really it’s about type. And this is a farewell. Since about 1984, Post articles in the print edition have been set in Century Old Style. For a long, long time, I considered Century Old Style to be the best way to read newspaper work. Maybe because I always wanted to work at the Post. I’ve become so used to seeing my work set in that font over the last 10 years that it’s difficult to imagine anything else.

Well, starting Monday, it will be in something else. We’re switching to a font called Miller. It’s already in use at the Sunday mag, and you see it in a lot of other magazines — I think New York magazine uses it. I like it. And, in a complete coinkydink, Tinsel is set in Miller too. (Shout out to Melissa Lotfy, who designed all the inside type for Tinsel and did a marvy job.)

I’m a font and design nerd, and my passions in that realm are unrequited. My oldest friends remember that, back in the beginning, I was into newspaper design much more than I was into newspaper reporting and writing. I’ve always sort of felt that I missed my calling.

Do I love everything about the Post redesign? No. I do like much of it, but  I think it could have been a little more daring, especially with the daily version of the Style flag. (The one they’ll be using for Sunday is much cooler — a font called Big Figgins.) I do know that it takes a couple weeks to get used to any redesign. I’m curious what people will think. I have no doubt that the redesign will be interpreted into the epic, blogospheric story of our imminent doom, etc., as told by the press critics and anyone else who can’t wait for newspapers to die.

Another thing? We’re losing “Washington Post Staff Writer” off our bylines. That also feels like a small part of some larger grief process. All we do now, it sometimes seems, is let go and look bravely ahead. Yet, in the scheme of things, I can let that small appellation go. I am still very proud to be a Washington Post staff writer, whether it says so or not.