Why we print the proof
A PDF hides the things that matter: weight, tooth, the way an ink sits on a fibre. So we print.
Every route we show a client has been on paper first. Not because we are romantic about it, but because paper is an argument you cannot skim. A proof on a desk gets picked up, turned, held at arm's length and disagreed with — and disagreement is the fastest route to the right answer.
Screens flatter work. They add contrast that no substrate has, they hide the weight of a rule, and they let a headline sit at a size nobody will ever hold. The first time a wordmark meets uncoated stock is the first time you find out whether the counters survive. Better that it happens in week two than in a print run of forty thousand.
They cost about forty pounds and they have saved every project we have ever run at least a fortnight.
There is a social argument too. A proof pinned to a wall is a public object. Three people can stand in front of it and point at the same thing at the same time, which is something a shared link has never once achieved. Meetings get shorter. Opinions get more specific. "I don't love it" becomes "the second line is doing too much", and that is a note we can act on.
So the fee for every project includes proofs, and the proofs are not optional. We pull them at the end of week one and again before anything is signed off. They cost about forty pounds and they have saved every project we have ever run at least a fortnight.