[HN Gopher] Typography on Pencils (2023)
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Typography on Pencils (2023)
Author : NaOH
Score : 103 points
Date : 2026-01-20 21:18 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.presentandcorrect.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.presentandcorrect.com)
| transitorykris wrote:
| I love the incorrect book quotes on the "Mitsu-Bisho" pencil!
| tempodox wrote:
| I didn't know there's such a thing as Pencil Day, but this
| collection is impressive.
| keane wrote:
| Wes Anderson coded
| jen729w wrote:
| Confirming I own at least 2 of these, possibly 4. My pencil
| archives are currently in another country so I can't check.
|
| Pencils are lovely. Once you've got one, it works until it ends;
| this process is highly visible and thus predictable. They never
| leak. They're erasable. They write on almost any surface. They're
| cheap, so one can amass a collection without breaking the bank.
|
| And, as demonstrated, they're beautiful, varied, and represent
| the entire world.
|
| An utterly dependable instrument. I'm never without one, and
| can't remember the last time I wrote with a pen.
| jstanley wrote:
| Pencils are awful because if it has been dropped once in its
| history then the lead inside is cracked into many pieces, and
| will randomly break off without warning, then you need to
| sharpen it all the way to the next piece of lead, which then
| has a fair chance of breaking off almost immediately, and so on
| until you run out of pencil or patience.
|
| And that's if you have a pencil sharpener handy, which is extra
| paraphernalia the pencil requires of you. Or else a sharp knife
| and a steady hand, and then the temptation is always to end up
| with a blunt tip because at the margin making the point blunter
| allows you to expose more lead with a minimum of cutting
| through the wood.
|
| An utterly infuriating instrument. The best writing and drawing
| instrument is the Mitsubishi Uni-ball Eye UB-150 pen. It always
| works and it lays down a high-contrast line very smoothly every
| time. I'm never without one.
|
| The main downside of the UB-150 is that everybody who sees it
| instantly recognises it and they are liable to grow legs. I
| recommend buying them in large quantities and sprinkling them
| all around your house and workplace so that there is such
| obvious abundance that nobody feels compelled to take one. And
| if they do, well there are plenty more for everybody else
| anyway.
| otherme123 wrote:
| As you know for your Uniball, not all pencils are the same. A
| cheap ball pen can have a lot of problems and stop writting
| at any moment; a cheap pencil has always a broken core or is
| impossible to sharpen because the wood turns to pulp. But a
| decent pencil (Tombow Mono 100 or Faber-Castell 9000 or
| Staedtler Mars) will get you a perfect core and wood from
| beginning to end that should not break unless you press like
| crazy. Despite being excelent, they are cheap, about 2EUR.
| xcf_seetan wrote:
| Good quality pencils does no show the cracked lead and if you
| take good care of them they will not have those cracks. On
| the other hand you could use a mechanical pencil with
| replaceable good quality 2mm leads. It can also reuse any
| little bits of cracked leads laying around. Also if you don't
| want a blunter point, you can rotate the pencil every few
| strokes and it would auto-sharp itself.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| Looking at the pictures brought back the smell of sharpening a
| wooden pencel and resulted me in ordering a couple boxes of
| pencils. It has probably been 30 years since I have used a normal
| wooden pencil other than the odd usage here and there, have used
| the mechanical pencil I swiped from my mom back in 9th grade for
| all my pencil needs, I had a math teacher who required us to
| write in pencil and I only had pens. He was a great teacher,
| erased the board with the sleeve of tweed jacket and would be
| covered in chalk dust by the end of the day.
| xcf_seetan wrote:
| Happy to see our Portuguese pencil maker Viarco represented!
| (it's the first one in the pencil images). I just love pencils,
| have some hundreds of all sorts, and keep buying them; lol, i
| even pick up stray pencils on the street, took them home and take
| good care of them :)
| kmoser wrote:
| I was hoping to see the names of the typefaces used on each
| pencil. Some are a mystery, some are tantalizingly familiar.
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