pencil

Ask Woodclinched: The perfect, minimized desk

/ Andy Welfle / 3 Comments

A letter came in from one of my many, many adoring fans:

Dear Woodclinched,

My lease is up at the end of the year, and I’m looking to create the perfect office. I can handle the desk, the artwork, and the liquor cart but I’m a little stuck when it comes to my writing utensils and accessories.

Here’s the problem: I have a hard time focusing on getting stuff done. If I know there’s a pencil or notepad I want to use and it’s not right in front of me, I can’t get anything done.

So… If I’m going to outfit my office with one type of pencil, one pen and one notepad/notebook… what do you recommend?

Thanks!

Alex Jonathan
http://www.expeditiousculture.com

A nice, clean desk, via iDesk, a great Tumblr about Apple-accessorized desks and offices. Yes, I know that I am an Apple fanboy.

Excellent question, Alex! I completely understand your quest. I’ve been trying for years to minimize my desk. I am, by nature, a cluttered person. As much as I strive for a “less is more” mantra, I have realized that more often than not, I’m going to trend to “more is more”.

That being said, I have learned to pair things down to a few essentials. And when it comes to my writing paraphernalia, I’ve thought a lot about it. More than most sane people should. Read on for an exhaustive list. Continue reading →

Open Thread Tuesdays: Hex or Round? The Throwdown

/ Andy Welfle / 7 Comments

On other blogs that I’ve been part of, we’ve occasionally set aside a post every once in a while for discussion. I would love to get a dialog going between all of the online pencil bloggers, users, and collectors, because I think we can all benefit from sharing advice, tips, specific interests, etc.

So here goes: I’ll post a topic to get us started, and feel free to keep us on my topic, or start your own. No real guidelines, just keep it clean (as I know you will).

TOPIC: What shape of a pencil do you prefer? Round pencils or hexagonal? Why? Is it for comfort? Grip? Looks?

Roll-your-own pencils

/ Andy Welfle / 3 Comments

I love gadget blogs. This time I found ANOTHER concept product, and while it looks like it isn’t as far along as the one I posted last week, it’s cooler and more useful. Behold, the P&P Office Waste Paper Processor:

According to their post on Yanko Design, this would convert old waste paper into pencils — just add graphite, glue and power:

P&P Office Waste Paper Processor is one of those things that you wish you knew how it works, but dang! no reasonable explanation provided at all! Maybe it’s a deliberate attempt on the designer teams’ part, because their idea is a surefire hit! What this lovely machine does is that it converts all those useless memos on your table to something useful: A Pencil! Paper goes in from one end and come out shaped like a sexy writing tool! Sexy enough an idea to bag a Liteon Award as well!

I would be concerned about the type of paper going into the machine — we know that newspaper can convert to a pencil fairly well, but office paper? Obviously, it’s still a concept, but I would love to see more detail on how they would turn a stiff, crinkly piece of standard #24 paper into a pencil barrel, without making it seem like you were writing, well, with a rolled-up piece of paper.

More pictures from Yanko Design below.

The Everlasting Gobstopper of pencils

/ Andy Welfle / 4 Comments

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I saw a post a few days ago on the Wired Gadget Lab, a friend of gadgetry high-tech and low-tech alike, about “the continuous pencil“, which is a really cool concept. It is still a concept, mind you, but the design is pretty genius. You have a series of wooden pencils that are slotted. When one wears down until it’s too small to hold, just pop a new one on the back and continue. Continue reading →

Don’t just use your pencil, LISTEN to it.

/ Andy Welfle / 1 Comment

Sean at Blackwing Pages just posted about report that some of the softer lead varieties of the Eberhard-Faber Microtomic (what a great name!) looked and felt like the über-smooth writing experience of a Blackwing. Go to that post to see the review, but one thing he said really stood out to me:

… [B]eing as objective as possible the first thing I noticed was how things sounded. Yes, you read correctly, how things sounded. Continue reading →