Why some plates are still drawn by hand before we set type

People expect data visualization to arrive already glossy. On this desk a first plate is often pencil on board: a bar, a date window, a unit written in the margin in Georgian and again in English if the committee mixes both.

The pencil stage exists because a wrong unit is hard to unsay once it is bound. I have drawn “visits” when the steward’s sheet was counting page loads, including the language toggle. I have drawn minutes when the clock on the kiosk was five minutes fast every evening. Those mistakes show in pencil. They hide in a finished texture.

Hand drawing also forces a caption. If I cannot write one sentence under the bar, the plate is ornament. The sentence has to name the hall or the staff board without naming a reader.

We do set type. The bound folio is not a sketchbook. But the board stays in the cabinet until Elene has walked the caution line. Stewards sometimes ask why the work takes five weeks. Part of the answer is this quiet day with a pencil, which does not photograph well and saves a committee from a confident error.