Pencil Against The Machine

AI floods the feed with instant output. Pencil Magazine stays analogue and slow. Created by artist and designer Sasha Wizansky with poet and visual artist Matthea Harvey, the publication is made entirely from graphite pencil and paper – and asks its contributors to work the same way.

That means no colour, slick digital effects or infinite tabs open in the background. The result is intimate, strange and deeply human: handwritten essays, sketches, drawings and visual experiments that feel almost oppositional to the frictionless pace of online culture. But Pencil Magazine isn’t simply nostalgic for pre-digital life. It taps into something increasingly visible across culture right now — a craving for analogue experiences, slower attention spans and creative practices rooted in the physical world.

As conversations around AI, originality and digital exhaustion intensify – including in our upcoming The Stupid Report, as well as in a recent SEED – the magazine asks a deceptively simple question: what kind of thinking becomes possible when we step away from screens and make things by hand again?

Selected by Stack and shipping to all Protein MEMBERS this month, Pencil Magazine arrives less as a rejection of technology than as a reminder that creativity can still be tactile, communal and perfectly imperfect.

You designed a magazine around one of the most basic creative tools possible: the pencil. Why the pencil specifically – what does it unlock that digital tools don’t?

Sasha Wizansky: We love pencils because everyone already has a relationship to them – we all used them in school. They are cheap, almost universally available and unintimidating. Yet each pencil comes with infinite possibilities. Digital tools are based on grids. Even if the pixels are minuscule, they are built on a gridded scaffolding that directs your work. It is freeing to shed this scaffolding.

Using an analogue tool, with all the accompanying friction, facilitates a relationship with your body. With each mark of the pencil, you feel specific feedback – is it scratchy? Smooth? Is the line getting thicker as the point loses its sharpness? The pencil becomes an extension of your hand. There is solid research showing that people learn better when they take notes by hand, and I believe many forms of creative work benefit in the same way.

Long before Pencil Magazine, while working as a designer, I realised that my best ideas emerged when I used paper and pencil far from my computer. Since then, as the distractions inhabiting every internet-enabled device have increased exponentially, it has become even more necessary for me to get away from screens to access a contemplative creative mindset. A pencil will never try to get you to start shopping in the middle of your project.

What happens to people creatively when every blank page is instantly fillable by a machine? Do you think we’re losing tolerance for uncertainty, boredom or thinking things through ourselves?

I think we are losing patience for many things. I learn over and over that the slow way of doing things is usually the most fulfilling. When I slow down and really engage with a task, I learn more, I have a calmer experience and I am more proud of what I have created.

Pencil Magazine asks contributors to work within a really tight constraint: graphite pencil and paper only. Why do constraints often produce more interesting work than infinite freedom?

Infinite freedom can be paralysing. I love a good parameter to help me start a project. Pencil Magazine began with a thought experiment: would it even be possible to create a magazine using only pencils and paper? I think the challenge opens up rich visual and textual possibilities. Don’t get me wrong – I personally love colour, and I love photography too – but it’s been a wonderful journey to deliberately choose this one medium and palette and appreciate the subtleties and range of textures it can create.

Your mission talks about reconnecting people with analogue experiences. Do you think people are genuinely craving that right now, or has “analogue” become its own kind of aesthetic performance?

I’m happy that analog is in. People will be drawn to it for different reasons, and its trendiness does not dilute its value. Hopefully the analog movement will only grow. I’ve heard from countless people that they are fed up with the addictiveness built into their devices and deeply crave more physical, human experiences.

At my local bar, they now host our pencil parties as well as collage nights and calligraphy classes run by various groups. One of the most fulfilling things I’ve tried lately is metalsmithing – few activities have helped me access a flow state so directly. You can’t let your mind wander while you’re holding a flaming torch.

I highly recommend hiking, saunas, crafts of all kinds, pottery, figure drawing – all these analog activities help connect people with their bodies, senses, and faculties of attention. Most of them can happen in community, too, which is especially meaningful.

Soon we’re releasing The Stupid Report, partly about how people increasingly outsource judgement and thinking to AI. Do you think there’s a relationship between physical making – drawing, writing by hand, etc – and independent thought?

100% yes. I love the phenomenon where, while writing or drawing, you create something unexpected. When I thumb through the four issues of Pencil Magazine we’ve published so far, I’m struck by the range of original visual and written material. I do think using analog materials helps people access creative states that lead to new ideas.

We are not anti-technology, though. Pencil Magazine relies on scanners, layout software, offset printing technology, and more. We try to use technology judiciously – to reproduce contributors’ work accurately and share it widely in ways that inspire people around the world. Thoughtful technology use can free us up to focus on the central work of this project: facilitating connection between a worldwide community of people who value the handmade.

In a world where AI can generate polished images and text endlessly, what feels unmistakably human to you now? What qualities still resist automation?

I believe all art resists the kind of automation offered by AI. We love the smudges, mistakes and human touches in the work submitted to Pencil Magazine. Also: community gatherings cannot be generated by AI. Our events have shown us that people are hungry for real, in-person experiences.

What would you hope someone feels after spending an hour with Pencil Magazine instead of an hour online?

I hope that slowing down to engage with content that is black-and-white and handwritten feels rewarding. It can sometimes be challenging to read handwritten text but, like reading a letter, I believe taking the time to experience these works can connect the reader and writer or artist in a profound way.