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An Always Sharp Pencil: Uni Kuru Toga
- apgwoz 17y agoThe more interesting part about this article is the conclusion at the end: You know, to some extent it almost doesn’t matter how well this pencil works or not, it’s the thought that counts. These sorts of ideas and innovations are occurring in Japan, not elsewhere. Just look at that booklet! This is clearly the product of a design team and company that really think about their product and their market, see a future, try something new, move forward, and not just think, “Oh, it’s a pencil, we’ll always sell them, but there’s nothing much ever going to happen with pencils! They’re a cash-cow, just milk them.”
- quant18 17y agoWell, it's a nice engineering trick, but it seems kind of like featuritis --- doing something neat because you can. For me, in fact, pencil bluntness is a feature, not a defect. Thicker lines disguise the fact that my kanji handwriting isn't very aesthetical. Thinner lines bring out its ugliness and lack of balance into sharp relief. I wonder if this is a problem for any native writers as well. (On the other hand, the ones who want to show off their nice handwriting will probably be attracted to this pencil. Then those of us who use blunt/uneven pencils will be automatically assumed to be ugly-handwriters.)