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Pencils That Visually Indicate Their Line Weight

By Design Kaz, a/k/a Kazuya Ishikawa

By Rain Noe - October 27, 2021

in Object Culture

Check out these pencils:

As designer Kazuya Ishikawa, a/k/a Design Kaz, explains (machine translated):

"Conventional pencils are indicated by letters such as 2H and 2B, so it is difficult for elementary school students who start using pencils to choose. Also, since pencils cannot be used for trial writing, there is no way to check the thickness of the core. Therefore, I devised a pencil that allows you to intuitively understand the density of the core by marking the density of the core with a handwriting on the grip."

Ishikawa's concept won the Jury Prize Original Award for the 14 th New Product Design Competition, sponsored by Japanese stationary manufacturer Shachihata.

Ishikawa runs both a website and a YouTube channel filled with design industry navigational tips, with advice on how to switch fields, increase your chances of winning a design competition, come up with original ideas, et cetera. Both are Japanese-language-only, so non-Japanese-speakers will have to rely on some machine translation to view them.

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Zach W

3 years ago

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I don't understand the concept. The number on the pencil (2H or 4B, etc) indicates the hardness of the lead, not the line thickness... This makes no sense.

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Nathan D.

3 years ago

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Sharpness dictates line weight.

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