I've been perusing the Dublin Theatre Festival brochure. Just turning the pages makes me itch to see the shows, and there are some good ones – including the Wooster Group's Hamlet (yet to be seen in the UK), Elevator Repair Service's The Select (The Sun also Rises) which was at Edinburgh in 2010, The Picture of Dorian Gray, adapted and directed by Neil Bartlett at the Abbey, a new play from Declan Hughes called The Last Summer and another from Room author, Emma Donoghue. Plus, there's plenty from established and rising Irish companies including Druid, PanPan, Brokentalkers and ANU, whose Laundry was so devastating last year. Every time I turn a page, it makes me want to add another show to my schedule.

I've always loved theatre brochures, and – designed well – they can not only be a useful tool in enticing people to book tickets for particular shows but a great advertisement for a venue. The Summerhall brochure at Edinburgh this year was a thing of beauty, and I definitely decided to see more shows at the venue because of it. Every turn of the page was like having someone bat their eyelashes at you.

But the theatre brochure is, of course, an endangered species. The Spill Festival has always been paperless, Battersea Arts Centre has already dispensed with season brochures and others such as Soho Theatre are moving in the same direction. Warwick Arts Centre has been exploring using print in different ways to encourage audiences to sign up to email lists and engage through social media.

This is good news for trees – and probably for marketing budgets, too. It's not a problem for younger audiences who increasingly find what they want to see and book for it all online. In Edinburgh this year, it was apparent that in-person and telephone booking had become the preserve of the over-40s. But while knowing what you want to see and booking it is fine, one of the advantages of the brochure is that it lays out everything that is available, including the shows and events you didn't know you were interested in until you started browsing. An online brochure not only involves lots of scrolling, but requires you to actively click. It makes it easier to stick to what you know, rather than explore the repertoire.

Perhaps I'm being nostalgic and just showing my age (in the same way as all those people who haven't really come to terms with the passing of LPs). My head knows that the way theatre is sold is changing as rapidly as the way it is made and distributed, and we need to explore all possibilities. But when the theatre brochure finally makes its final bow, I shall miss it.