When Richard emailed me a picture of this Barch-Payzant lettering pen set, I squealed. Oh wonderful world that has such elegant solutions in it. These pens are forward-weighted; solid brass nibs, light wooden handles.They immediately reminded me of the Indonesian tjanting, used to apply hot wax to cloth for resist batik. Unlike the tjanting, these lettering …
I seem to have a problem. Notebooks already have covers. Why do I need to cover them with more covers? Midori’s A5 MD notebook fits snugly into Labrador’s medium leather cover, and doesn’t seem to mind. Midori does make a cotton canvas carry pouch for the MD, with pockets for a smartphone and pens. And here comes …
I first heard of this project when Pierre asked me and many others to answer a survey designed to help him come up with a flex pen. We heard back from him in May, when he emailed us looking for a focus group. By July 2014, he’d sent us pictures of his prototypes. Desiderata Pens opened …
I’ve worked with brands for 25 years. That’s 52,000 hours of figuring out how to make brands engaging, persuasive, convincing – and ultimately, worth a place in someone’s life. The new Esterbrook has caused consternation among pen people. To me, it is an emerging story of the power of a brand, even after its original owners have gone, because of the meaning it holds for the people who love it.
“Sporadic” would be a kind word. The holidays, wrapping up 2014, and business travel really did my blogging in. It doesn’t mean I don’t have anything to say, or show; my Evernote to-write list scares me with its length and lack of ticked checkboxes. Storytelling-in-a-blink (hello, Instagram) doesn’t help. My words are clunky. We could …