Came across this old color theory book from the 70s at a thrift store once, and it had these little hand-drawn grids with notes like "put the warm tones here, trust me." So I tried it out on a dashboard UI I was building, and honestly it helped more than any color picker tool ever has. The graph paper forces you to think about the relationship between the colors instead of just tweaking hex codes until your eyes hurt. I still mostly brute force things too, but having a rough plan on paper keeps me from going down too many rabbit holes.

Wait wait wait, "took forever but felt right"? Dude, hand sewing headbands for every single book? My hands hurt just reading that. I've got a buddy who tried hand sewing for fun once, said it took him like an hour per book. I can't even imagine doing that for a whole bindery job, that's insane. Mad respect for the grind though, for real. Those machines are fast but I totally believe hand sewn ones hold up better, especially on something like a family bible or a reference book that gets beat up.

Yeah I read that method is a scam. Real binders use the paste.

The real win is probably the cast iron. Modern presses use chinesium pot metal that flexes under pressure. That estate sale find likely has a flywheel and rack and pinion setup machined from actual iron. I bet the threads are acme pitch too, way better for binding than the standard threading on modern stuff. Plus old equipment was designed to last generations not just through a warranty period. You basically got a heirloom for the price of a night out.

My buddy Chris had his whole presentation deck corrupt on a thumb drive 20 minutes before a pitch in Austin. He used to clown on me for keeping screenshots of everything but that day he was begging for my phone. @sean_robinson is right about having PDFs handy, I always keep a stripped-down version of my portfolio on my phone too. Chris ended up AirPlaying from his phone to the conference room TV and it actually looked cleaner than his original slides. The client didn't even notice the switch until he told them after. Now he does the same thing for every big meeting.