kickstarter

Kickstarter Rainbow Pencils: What does it MEAN?!

/ Andy Welfle / 3 Comments

Kickstarter is such an interesting place. From documentaries about Juggalos to more 3D printers than you can shake an extruded plastic stick at, anyone with an idea, cursory video production skills and an internet connection can sign up for a project.

And I love it.

Luckily, there’s no shortage of scribomechanica fans out there who have Kickstarter projects. I won’t go into all of the pens you can find being made there (Brad at Pen Addict has a really great list already assembled — I am partial to the gorgeous Render K by Karas Kustoms), but our inky brethren can pledge to their hearts’ delight.

While pickings are admittedly slimmer, pencil lovers can still find some gems. I’ve written about a few of them before, like a pencil ruler or the Sprout pencil. Why, just yesterday, Pencil Revolution shared this gorgeous notebook with a funny name that just reached its funding goal.

So I’m excited to share this one. This pencil’s only purpose seems to lie in its novel aesthetics, though it’s utterly charming.

It seems simple enough — it’s a rainbow pencil:

Lisa Frank pencils

Oh god, not these. Lisa Frank has nothing on this project. It’s much more understated. Like a kiwi.

Yeah, a kiwi.

When you buy your Kiwi at the supermarket, it’s just a simple, brown hairy thing, right? But you slice it open, and there’s an unexpected shock of color.

Rainbow pencils by Duncan Shotton Design.

These pencils are similar. They have a plain, matte white (or black) barrel. Very tasteful. Then when you start sharpening with your handheld blade sharpener…

POW.

Rainbow pencils by Duncan Shotton Design.

I love me some GIFs, so I was extra excited to see that the Kickstarter page had one of this pencil!

Made with layers of recycled paper, this pencil creates a rainbow as your sharpen it. According to the designer:

Rainbow Pencils function like regular wooden pencils, and are the same size and weight, but they’re not made from wood, they’re made from layers of recycled waste paper. In the United States alone, over 7 million cubic feet of wood are used every year to manufacture wooden pencils. With rainbow pencils, not only do all those trees not need to be cut down, but the huge amount of paper that might otherwise be thrown into landfill, can be recycled and put to good use. Each pencil has a 6-layer rainbow core and comes finished in either black or white.

What a fun way to be environmentally friendly! Most of the recycled paper pencils I’ve used before involved newsprint, so aesthetically, it either looked like newspaper, or mottled gray paper. It definitely lacks the aesthetics of a cedar pencil — no fragrance and no tight woodgrain look.

This rainbow pencil helps with that. I certainly can’t speak to the performance of the pencil, but if delight is in the details, then sharpening this would be a joy.

Head on over to their Kickstarter page to check out the pledge levels and to watch the video!

Rainbow Pencils by Duncan Shotton | Kickstarter.com

New Kickstarter Project: “Sprout: a pencil with a seed”

/ Andy Welfle / 4 Comments

This is a fun project: it’s a premium cedar pencil, that has a seed embedded in a water-activated capsule in the top. When it gets too short to use, stick it in some dirt, water it, and watch the seed grow! Here’s their Kickstarter project (check it out for a really awesome video):

Sprout: a pencil with a seed. | Kickstarter.com

It comes in several different varieties: from flowers to vegetables, jalapeño, marigold, parsley, basil, cherry tomato, and lots more.

Can you imagine how fun this would be in a classroom? Each kid gets a different variety, and after they wear their pencils down, the teacher plants them in a big window garden, and by the end of school — vegetables!

Sprout: seed pencils. Stick the end in dirt, and watch your plant grow!

Stick your Sprout pencil in the dirt, water it, and make the plant grow!

It seems like these guys aren’t just putting seed in any old pencil, either. The description of their project makes it sound like they put a lot of thought into the quality of their pencil:

We really like writing with wooden pencils.  They have a tactile feel that even the best mechanical pencils can’t match.  Getting up to sharpen them forces us to take a break and look around, a great way to reconnect during a long problem set.  We designed Sprout around a high quality Ticonderoga cedar pencil body.  It’s a great writing experience.  And it smells really nice too.

I couldn’t agree more. The creators are a group of MIT engineers who formed a company, Democratech, who conceived and produced this whole thing!

The only possible flaw I could see in this pencil is the very thing that makes it unique: the water-activated capsule at the top. As the FAQ says:

What happens if I accidentally wet my Sprout?

If you spill something on your Sprout the tip will begin to dissolve, getting the seed ready for germination.  Unfortunately Sprout doesn’t know the difference between accidental and intentional watering, so if you accidentally wet your Sprout it’s time for planting.  We’ve worked hard to make a resilient seed capsule but it’s a tradeoff between resistance to accidental spills and plantability.

Not being an engineer, from MIT or anywhere else, I can’t think of a way around this, unless it comes with a plastic cap or something to keep the water out (and would defeat the purpose of being eco-friendly).

I maxed out my Kickstarter budget for the year, so I can’t get in on this. But you should! This is my favorite donor level, for $100:

Bacon Bliss Pack. We wish we could grow Bacon at home, in our office, or in our classroom. Unfortunately we can’t, but it doesn’t mean we can’t pretend! We’ll send you 10 Heirloom Basil Sprouts printed as though they contained Bacon. And we’ll laser etch your logo or up to 50 characters of your choosing onto all the Sprouts in this pack. Free domestic shipping.

Sprout: a pencil with a seed. | Kickstarter.com
Democratech.us | Democratech’s website

The Pencil Ruler: a Kickstarter project founded by an 11 year-old

/ Andy Welfle / 3 Comments

I love Kickstarter. So many amazing ideas and innovations have come to fruition because of the social funding tool, from an iPod Nano watch to a de-centralized social media tool. I’ve talked about a pen-related venture on here before, but I am lucky enough to be featuring a pencil project today!

I got an email earlier today from Nate at Brand New Box, a web development firm in San Diego. They are helping to create the Rule Pencil, dreamed up by an 11-year old kid.

Nate said,

Last week my business partner, Matt, helped an 11-year-old friend of ours launch a Kickstarter project for a Ruler Pencil.  The response has been amazing, to say the least.

5 days in and the project is 500%+ funded. Folks like the idea, and they love Nathan.  As you can imagine, our little buddy is flipping out.

Their Kickstarter project is innovative, and it’s a relatively simple idea — put a ruler on a pencil. I know, I know, it’s been done before, but perhaps not with this level of simplicity, and with such… well, heart. I know that I could have used a ruler pencil many times when I was eleven. Nathan, this kid, had the gumption to make it happen.

The Kickstarter video:

As of today, the project was very close to getting a $2,000 total in pledges. It only needed $350 to cover a minimum order.

The original point of the email to me was to brainstorm some ideas for a quality pencil. These guys are art-minded, and appreciate a good pencil. I suggested talking with CalCedar about their private label pencil program, but don’t know enough of the details to tell if that’ll work for their needs or not.

I suggested a triangular pencil which would accomodate three different units of measurement: imperial (inches), metric (centimeters), and point (picas). After all, I imagine this will appeal to a lots of graphic designers who sketch their designs longhand, and might be replacing (or complementing) their trusty pica rulers.

Anyone have any further ideas? Leave them in the comments below.

And to all you pencilnalia enthusiasts out there: Hop on by the Kickstarter page and pledge! Help make sure this eleven year old entrepreneur grows up loving wooden pencils — someday he might owe his fortune to his love for them. There are some great perks to the different pledge levels, according to the project page:

  • For $5, he’ll mail you a package of 5 Ruler Pencils.
  • For $20, he’ll mail you a special package of 10 Ruler Pencils, and list your name on the ‘Special Founders’ list mailed out with each package of Ruler Pencils .
  • For $50, he’ll mail you a special package of 20 pencils, put you on the founders list, plus send you a custom drawing (he’s pretty good).

I’ll be pledging as soon as I can — I want my name on that Founders list.

Ruler Pencils: a brilliant idea, invented by a kid. | Kickstarter Project Page

UPDATE: This kid’s got spunk. Check out his update video to his backers!