Question by : What’s the opposite of digital media?
I’m a design student majoring in visual communications, but I also do hands on work like airbrushing, painted murals, and custom canvases and candles, and many other medias. I’m developing a website for one of my classes but I’m not sure what to call the tab for my “physical artwork” I assumed it was analog, but after some research I found this article:

“Analog, as its name suggests, refers to being analogous to something. If we’re referring to the adjective used in technology, the definition of analog is:

Of, relating to, or being a device in which data are represented by continuously variable, measurable, physical quantities, such as length, width, voltage, or pressure. – Wordnik

So a great example of an analog technology would be a vinyl record. The audio is stored as waves (variable data) within the grooves of the vinyl. Digital audio stores the data as numbers, as finite units of data per second. If that audio is George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, then funk on my brotha’. What’s important is that a vinyl record is legitimately something that deserves to be called ‘analog’. Film is not. Film captures the image physically, there is no data (waves or otherwise) to be found as there is on the record.

Plenty of older (and current) technologies are analog. Just be sure to ask yourself if that device has variable signals/data, or if that device is just really old. A television with a cathode ray tube (CRT) is an analog device; a cave painting of a man stabbing a mastodon with a spear is not. Sound waves being converted into an electrical signal is analog, a film negative is not.”

So if it’s not analog, and it’s definitely not digital, what is it? What word would I use to encapsulate my physical artwork like paintings on walls or canvas’, or airbrush and bumper stickers? Please help me! My assignment’s due soon!

Best answer:

Answer by HP Wombat
Call it “non-digital media”

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