Continuing on from my series on Cognisant Design, this fourth article in the series, I’m going to concentrate a bit on pens.

I’m a bit of a stationary nut and have been for most of my life. For some reason ever since I was a little boy I remember my friends and I finding and creating elaborate boxes and containers for our pens; this was always considered one of the coolest ways to spend a weekend, and then show off on Monday. We all tried our best to outdo each other at school.

I think my love for pens might have started off with a gift by my father (when I was really young), which was this thin silver ballpoint Cross pen. At the time I thought the pen was the greatest thing in the world. To be fair, it’s a design classic. The only thing about the pen that never sat well with me was that it was a ballpoint pen. The ink in a ballpoint pen doesn’t flow as nicely and the lines are not as precise as I would like them to be. I’ve looked at their website now and there is something of an alternative, clearly they can’t make the smaller swivel pens with the rollerball ink in there - and even then I don’t know how good the ink will actually be.

Over the years I tried using fountain pens, but the fact that they ran out of ink constantly, were messy and ultimately I really didn’t like what was left on the page, it looked faded, I kept looking elsewhere. My hunt eventually led me to the greatest invention as far as writing equipment is concerned, gel ink.

###Muji For the last few (at least 8) years I’ve been a very staunch supporter of the Muji gel ink pens. Although these come in a range of colours, I’m a black ink man. Blue ink doesn’t do it for me. On my recent trip to London, I found that Muji had upgraded this line of pens, so that you can now buy the ink refills for a reasonable price - they also come in packs of 10 as well. God I love the Japanese.

As an aside, although I’m a Moleskin man through and through, I couldn’t help myself and picked up one of these threadbound notebooks. This has been a bit of a revelation. For smaller projects these are the ideal size to have one for each. They come with 72 pages and the binding is strong, while the pages are just the correct thickness and smoothness.

###Pilot While on honeymoon in Malaysia I was reading a copy of Icon and in it there was mention of the Pilot G-TEC C4. We were in this amazing bookstore, and I noticed these there and decided to buy 10. These have provide a very precise line and are great for sketching technical drawings. Some might say their line is a bit too precise, but they are very technical pens.

After looking on the Pilot website, one of the things that I would like to try is the Frixion Ball Slim pen - hey it’s got the word slim in it’s name.

###Zebra Another gel ink pen that I am enjoying at the moment for it’s thicker lines is the Zebra Sarasa Clip, at 0.5. I want to use the the 0.4 size. The surprising thing about these pens is the quality of the black ink, which is much richer than any of the pens that I have ever used. They can be a bit messy because they leave residues of ink which can be prone to smudging. As such I’ve not completely fallen in love with this pen.

###Suppliers I’d be remiss not to discuss your suppliers throughout all of this. One of the websites that kept coming up throughout my searches is Jet Pens. What a fantastic resource for pen geeks like myself. The other website to definitely check out is Cool Pencil Case. Unfortunately for me, the case that would I really, really, really want has been sold out. I’m going to see if my wife would be willing to try and make this for me, for one thing I can’t sow myself out of a paper bag (whatever that means).

Sometimes it takes a good long time for the penny to drop, even if you’ve been doing it for a seriously long time. For me the way in which I take and write notes (both at work and during play) has changed on the basis of getting an iPhone, installing Notational Velocity and having a web interface with Simplenote all linked together.

The effect that I didn’t actually expect was that the above three occurrences effectively changed my general workflow and how I take notes in my moleskin, and what ultimately that moleskin is actually used for, and by doing that it’s solved one of the biggest problems I actually had with taking notes in my moleskin.

###Moleskines My favourite type of notebook to use is my moleskins. I’ve been using these for nearly 7 years by now. Definitely read the wikipedia entry about the history of the Mokeskine, it’s actually pretty interesting. The ones that I have been using exclusively are the A5 notebooks, in black hardback, no lines, with the thinner pages.

I used my moleskine for two things really. Taking notes and sketching ideas out. Most of my projects and designs start like this. Based on the way my mind works, I thought that it would be best to handwrite all of my notes and thoughts down and then later take these notes out and put them onto the computer.

What I noticed was that I would come back to my diagrams, sketches and doodles all the time, but I’d rarely come back to my long form notes, and I’d end up rehashing sometimes these notes and ideas again and again. The problem was I never actually did that, and it was pretty rare that I would go back and actually use these written notes in a meaningful way. Basically I was using the moleskine (at least when it came to notes) as a note dumping ground, with some useful sketches inbetween.

And that was fine. The new way is better.

The way I justified it was that before writing any meaningful words, I was getting them out of my system first. Ultimately the system was flawed, and rather than try and find a way to fix it, I kept using the same method. It’s always good to rethink something that you’ve been doing for a long while and actually assess whether or not that is the best way to do things.

###Whitelines Obviously before I got settled on Moleskine notebooks, I went through a vast number of notebooks, and still try out various ones from time to time. The ones that I am actually contemplating on getting are the Whitelines series of notebooks. I’ve owned one in the past, which was the wirebound A5 version. The paper is lovely to use and honestly the work does in fact pop off the page. However I think it’s definitely not the right size for the kind of work that I would use that for. I think I’ll be getting the A4 size for the sketching I envision in those notebooks and keeping my A5 moleskins for the general smaller ideas/sketches and notes that I like to take throughout the day.

###The New Paradigm I’ve now basically separated the way in which I organise my thoughts (because that’s what I’m doing). The first has most (over 90%) of my notes written within one of the three inputs I mentioned above, while the moleskines are basically used only for sketches and maybe small notes if I don’t have the facility to actually input the data electronically (because it wouldn’t be in the moment).

What this does is it basically allows me to now search all of my notes instantly. It also allows me to organise them and file them in a structured way - which definitely appeals to my filing junkie nature (I will be talking about this elsewhere in the future).

My moleskines are now effectively books filled with sketches, doodles, ideas, quick thoughts. There’s something pure about that setup. There’s something empowering. I must admit that out of habit I do go for my moleskine to start writing my list of things to do at work, and have to stop myself a bit and redirect myself to the computer to type that stuff in, but now when I look at my book, it’s just filled with sketches and diagrams and tiny notes that are so much more useful.

The single best bit of advise I can give about filing your notes is given by (of Mac Power users and macsparky fame). Here’s a couple of posts to get you going:

I basically follow the same convention and went ahead and changed all of my colons to an ‘x’ as well. This didn’t take me too long as I have only 100 notes so the pain barrier was pretty small.

• Notational Velocity Naming Conventions
• Notational Velocity Naming Redux

But here are a couple of tips I have myself to ease things for me as well. The way I come up with the initial letters to use is basically using the first and last letter of that particular word. So wedding would be wg. When it’s two words, then it’s basically the first letter of each word, so Broken Kode would be bk. This way I don’t have to think about whether or not I’ve used this particular word or not.

###Organisation Having finally organised my written notes, it was time to organise my moleskine a bit as well. The thing that I definitely don’t like is how my book after a while becomes messy on the inside. It’s not as clear what project I’m talking about instantly, because I never used a unified header for each and every page.

This is something I’m still working on to be honest, and so don’t have a clear solution, but the convention I’m working on at the moment basically lays things out in the following way. Right at the top of the page I put the following three items:

• Date
• Project Name
• Function

The function is usually on of the following:

• Notes
• Calcs
• Sketches
• Site Visit
• Meeting

This is neatly lined up at the very top of the page. This convention only took me 9 years of engineering to come up with (d’oh). I guess it’s better late than never and it proves that you can always find better ways to doing something, that makes you sit up and think, well that’s much better.

###Alternatives The fact that I’ve settled and fallen in love with this setup, doesn’t mean that it’s the right setup for you. Instantly Notational Velocity and Simplenote have become my favourite productive tools in the world. They organise my thoughts and information in such a way that information relating to me is now at my finger tips (literally).

There are those that want more information. That want to put images and other things within their documents/notes, and for that sort of thing there are soo many alternatives, so I guess it’s a question of trying what works best for you, but hopefully this setup gives you an insight as to what works for me, and maybe you can pull on some of that to make it work for you.

I remember the first time I came into contact. It was in Greece during one of my many trips from London. I was sitting in the kitchen and my mother had just brewed a new pot of coffee, drip filter with evaporated milk (makes it taste soo amazing and the colour is brilliant as well).

So anyway she pulls out this contoured mug with a handle and saucer. The feel on the outside was earthen and inviting. On the inside with this gleaming white polished inside. Once you put this mug to your lips it just felt correct. It felt right.

The rim was thin at the top but it got bigger gradually as it went down. That had the effect of giving you the impression that the rim was thin and delicate (which appears to be in vogue at the moment), but the actual mug gave it the impression that it was heavy and sturdy from the bottom.

That was the start of my love for S&P products.

###The Company Again, as with a lot of the topics that I will be discussing on the ‘Kode, information about these items is very sparse on the internet. I found the parent company Bambi first, which then led me to the main website. The best introduction to the company is off the official website itself:

Salt&Pepper is a key brand of Australian company, Bambis. It’s Head Office is in Melbourne, Australia. Bambis (www.bambis.com.au) was founded in 1970 by Bambis Pouroundis. At the time it was a two-person operation, mainly specialized in supplying gift shops. Bambis was a pioneer in establishing Australian trade relationships with Europe and Asia.

In the late 1980’s, the company embarked on a brand-building strategy with a wide range of contemporary products appealing to the middle to upper end of the market. It was then that the Salt&Pepper brand was born. Salt&Pepper is an acronym of the names of the driving force and founders of the brand, brother and sister team, Sissi Stasios and Harry Pourounidis. Sissi is the Creative Director and Harry is the Managing Director.

The global journey commenced in 2005 when the Bambis team joined forces with Paul Aerts (Aerts NV) from Belgium and Michael Vitsaxakis (EVE SA) from Greece to bring Salt&Pepper to Europe. Both Aerts and EVE are considered market leaders in their respective countries, hence an ideal combination of skills and experience was formed to ensure a successful launch of the brand.

From its launch in 1995, their passion has seen the brand grow to be one of Australia’s most successful exports, with its contemporary designs distributed to over 54 countries around the world. It offers fashion for the home at an affordable price.

Which all makes sense as to why I saw these excellent examples of kitchenware in Greece, while they had not yet reached the shores of England. Since then the brand has expanded considerably, as I was able to buy the same mugs in Beirut, from the same collection that my mum got in Greece.

However I’ve discussed this with my mother and she loves their stuff just as much as I do, and we’re convinced that someone very high up (I’m thinking either the brother or the sister) in the company must be a designer of some sort that would allow them to keep that level of elegance in their product line. The thing you can guarantee is that the products all look elegant, but restrained. Not looking design for the sake of it (as with much kitchenware, to distinguish itself from the rest).

While I could be wrong, but reading the titles of the ‘S’ part of the S&P, it appears that Sissi is the ‘Creative Director’, while Harry is the managing director. So Sissi clearly is the creative force in this endeavour and we have her to thank for the overall product line?

Product line

The truth is I would love to be able to go into an S&P store and just browse the shelves with their products. There is this amazing consistency of quality design. The way S&P distinguish themselves is through keeping the same level of cognisant design in all of the product lines - something which is actually extremely difficult to achieve in any line of business.

The most recent example of this was when my mother bought a mug over from Greece on a recent trip to Lebanon. The mug was white with a black bottom and a thin gold line separating the two. The form of the mug and the starkness of the black instantly signalled to me what I was looking at. Without hesitation I said ‘Salt & Pepper’.

###Website It comes as little surprise that the official website is also a thing of great beauty that really does showcase the huge number of lines. I honestly had no idea until I found the website, which obviously is not that easy to find, seeing the nature of the name involved.

The stark black and white core colours work obviously with the logo, but as you move through the various ranges you also get the titles of the product range in different colours, to add that bit of life in the design, while the product images themselves take those colours further.

###Follow Up I wish I could discuss it with the owners in more detail, or someone in their creative department. I’ll be updating this post as and when I get more information.

One of the things that I typically don’t do with most of my posts is come back and edit and change. For some reason I always felt that in terms of internet etiquette that was bad form - that will change with these posts. These posts are not intended to be perfect out of the door. I will hopefully have done some meaningful reasearch for them, however they will be modified as time goes by.

The first post in a long and hopefully interesting series of posts on Cognisant Design concentrates on a small part of a much large product, specifically the key to my car. It’s honestly very rare for Google to disappoint me and not give me back some information about something I’m looking for.

One of the things that I touch a feel and fiddle with every single day is my car key and then I saw it mentioned on Objectified as well and it just struck me that this key basically encompassed a lot of what I am talking about with Cognisant Design.

###Functionality When is a key, not just a key? When it’s also the central lock as well, and the car trunk as well. Admittedly I don’t use the trunk feature much. The simple fact is that they buttons

Oh and they’re all equipped with immobiliser technologies - which basically translates to the car doesn’t move if you don’t have the key, which is a nice feature for those thieving bastards (I’m sure those same thieving bastards have found ways around it, but hey you don’t want to make it easy on them).

And then of course you’ve got the metal key itself, tightly tucked away for when you need it with the press of an incredibly inviting metal button, which brings us nicely to the next important point.

###Flip Action This is the action of the key flipping open from it’s hidden position. I guess this has been honed from millions of cards sold, but basically there is an undeniable weight to the key springing open. It clicks into place with a purposeful click. It’s like a samurai being drawn. The thing is it’s totally addictive, so you find yourself clicking it constantly.

The button that releases the key mechanism is curved at the top which again is just exactly the way it should be rather than a flat button. It’s details like this that only serve to enhance what is truly a great piece of industrial design.

###Weight This is one of the most prominent aspects I find. The weight to size ratio of a product is always something that drives home quality in a product. The current iPhone for example is very dense in weight due to the glass front and back. When compared to another smartphone from say Samsung, you get this feel of much more inherent quality due to the weight.

That same concept is in this key. While I’m sure they could have made it lighter, doing so would basically make it feel cheap, and I’m sure that was not what the original designers were aiming for here. Which brings us to part of the reason for making it heavy.

###The Metal Key The person who brought this to my attention was my brother. See he’s got a Mercedes A-Class which is the Mercedes equivalent of the Golf, small hatchback, with a bit of German design thrown in. The key on that car is this plastic thing with a few buttons at the top. Essentially it’s missing the point here, an aspect of which VW have got it so right.

Obviously the sturdiness of the key is also important to complete the overall package, and again the key is a nice metal rectangular block, that again feels weighty due to the metal base which it swivels on.

###Ergonomic Design The final part of this exploration is basically the ‘je ne sais quoi’ factor. The ergonomic design of the key is just so terrible inviting. The groove at the top, just after the buttons invite you to rub your thumb there every single time you hold the key. The curved edges allow you to quickly and addictively flip the key in your hand again and again. Even the little VW logo which is made out of soft silicone is calling you to feel and pinch and poke with your nail.

And because no proper article about something technical is really complete, here is a disassembly of the key in question so you can see what the details are like on the inside.

###Lawsuit Action in searching around for more information about the Smart Key, i stumbled on a bunch of articles, completely unrelated to the topic of the design of these keys, but thought it was interesting as it basically dealt with legal action in relation to these keys. Smart Key Litigation and this FAQ, also there’s this document directly from VW

###Follow up One of the things that I want to make sure these posts have is a certain amount of longevity. I’m not writing these posts for the sake of writing them, but rather because I want to highlight specific things in my life that are designed in the way that I want them designed, and to show some appreciation.

Unfortunately due to how the coorporate world operates, it’s sometimes very difficult to single out the team or persons responsible for a design, unless the achieve cult status in product design, in which case you end up with the question of how much they actually contributed and how much of this was their ideas.

That’s a topic for another issue. Rather than go there, I would rather like to find out more about something if i’ve not covered it here. If there are articles, links or books that describe the topic I’ve written about, I really want to hear about it. If you’re one of the people that actually worked on this and are no longer working at this company and don’t mind talking about the experience, again I would like to hear from you.

I guess in a round about way, I’m trying to put a spotlight on aspects of design that are not typically considered, or really given their due.