Photo Courtesy: The Blackwing PagesHonestly, there was indeed a debate about whether to include this phrase long associated with the Blackwing on our new pencil. Many Blackwing fans seem to feel quite strongly that this slogan should have been used and do associate this slogan directly with the pencils smooth writing performance. One person even referred to our new Palomino Blackwing version using the phrase “One Quarter the Pressure, Twice the Speed” to indicate that, in his opinion, it was smoother than the original.
I have nothing against a good marketing and promotional slogan and I certainly recognized beforehand that “Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed” is loved and well respected. However, I’ll admit I never really understood the logic of this slogan from a purely technical standpoint. Increasing downward writing pressure quite obviously increases friction and thus would slow down the gliding of the pencil across the paper with a given amount of lateral force. The inverse is true as well, reducing pressure increases speed. Thus when applied to downward writing forces this slogan is essentially true regardless of the quality of the graphite and how smooth it is in relation to the graphite cores of other pencils. Alternatively, looking at varying degrees of lateral pressure being applied with a fixed amount of downward force, as smoothness increases the same lateral force certainly would increase speed and I can see the logic that reduced lateral pressure might maintain the same speed, but not necessarily double it. Who can write or draw legibly twice as fast anyway? So it did not strike me as a particularly appropriate slogan when evaluated purely from an scientific, literal standpoint to represent comparative performance advantage versus other pencils or even just smoothness in general.
There are indeed testing devices to measure lead wear rates and lay down samples on pencils as well as ink flow rate on pens. I’ve checked with our lead supplier and there is however no current instrument they use to technically measure smoothness under controlled circumstances, just the experience of their trained staff. Presumably if a proper technical definition of smoothness was determined this could perhaps be evaluated by designing appropriate scientific method and test equipment to statistically measure and demonstrate smoothness performance. (Note: Our CalCedar Research department once developed equipment and conducted a set of studies to scientifically and objectively measure the different forces required to sharpen pencils made of different wood species with different sharpening tools. Being a specialist in wood processing technology and supplier of wood to the pencil industry this makes some sense for us to have pursued this, however we are not a specialist producer of our own graphite cores and have not really considered such tests in developing our new Palomino Blackwing pencil. Remember Adam Smith’s Invisible hand.)
Obviously this is a very theoretical discussion for what really ultimately has more to do with consumer perceptions. I doubt Eberhard Faber ever conducted any studies to scientifically measure and demonstrate smoothness before coining the slogan. Looking up the word “smooth” in the dictionary yields several appropriate synonyms which have been applied to the Blackwing Pencil at times “soft”, “silky”, “velvety” and “effortless” being among the most common. From the concept being portrayed that the Blackwing pencil is more effortless to write with, then the idea that reducing pressure corresponds to a dramatically increased speed may be interpreted that the pencil has characteristics that defy natural forces thus imparting a super-natural type quality. Perhaps this is closer to the originally intended meaning and interpretation for this phrase than my more literal view expressed above, it’s certainly a romantic one. In any event I have no idea who to credit for the inspiration and genesis of the “Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed” slogan. Perhaps it was simply the Mad Men. Who knows?
From a trademark perspective it does not appear that Eberhard Faber ever took action that we could find to protect this phrase. During our cursory evaluation of this topic with counsel we came to no conclusive answer whether it would be worth the effort and expense and if it would ultimately successful in being granted a trademark. Certainly we could have used it without taking such steps but for this and other reasons chose not to.
We did consider alternate slogans that I felt would more directly reflect the Blackwing’s smooth writing performance and would also improve linkage with some of the existing “slogans” related to the Palomino’s performance. (e.g. Ride the Palomino, the smoothest ride around. Or alternately, Smooooth…!, which came from one of our fans in an animation about the Palomino). We’ve also since had several suggestions including some of my favorites: Fast as Light, Dark as Night and Back in Black. Ultimately we rejected printing any slogan as a matter of the economics of dual side printing, and a desire not to offend those who may not like a changed slogan and also consideration for trademark concerns.
As we look ahead to future production the decision of whether to use the “Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed” slogan is currently under re-evaluation though perhaps alternately we should just hold a proper contest for a great new slogan unique to the new Palomino Blackwing and a new generation of pencil fans. Once concept now under consideration is to produce a separate SKU as a classic reproduction version, though when or whether we could support multiple Blackwing items in the line over time really has to be seen with how sales go as we move through the fall. We are now working on last few details before putting up the new Palomino Blackwing for sale on Pencils.com.
Unfortunately, once the initial production began and we later received a couple hundred samples we noticed some very faint foil speckling occurred during imprinting and these tiny foil flakes had been sealed in when the sealer coat was applied. This covering quote was originally intended to protect the foil imprint and band from any further wear from continuous handling during use as is occasionally noted with respect to many pencils. It’s not a process we do with our existing Palomino products and probably should be eliminated for future production. Though we felt the pencils looked very good overall we were not fully satisfied with this characteristic as compared to the samples we approved before initial production. I actually stopped eraser tipping production on the balance of the pencils, but by this time all of the initial production pencils had been imprinted and sealed. My concern was do we release “as is” or not and it was at this time I determined to do a consumer sampling and evaluation to get a gauge on this issue. Among our options was scrapping the initial production and going back to design table before actually launching the product as well as evaluating other potential fixes. I determined this process would be a good opportunity to get broader evaluation of the product for ideas we could incorporate if we ended up doing a complete re-start or to be used for future design modifications if we ended up launching “as is”. After three weeks of feedback, we have now determined to proceed with the launch of the product “as is”. There were several decision factors, the first and most important being the overall positive response we’re now seeing to the Blackwing Palomino when considered across all of our evaluation groups. Despite a clear preference by many traditional fans for a more classic design and some indications the finish quality is just not quite up to par with Palomino, it appears we have developing demand now with people pressing us for pre-orders regardless of finishing characteristics and we learned that these characteristics consistently did not rate as highly on the scale of importance vs. other product features. Another major factor was that we subsequently determined that going back to the drawing board on design would result in a more extensive production and launch delay than originally anticipated, probably until mid to late 1st quarter 2011. This relates to scheduling issues with our subcontractor as well as to allowing adequate time to address the redesign process, including potential fine tuning of the graphite core formulation. Of course the cost of scrapping or reworking any of these pencils into other products from the initial run if possible was also a relevant decision factor, but not the first priority. I was fully prepared to scrap if I felt this was absolutely the best decision going forward and I’ll stress that our final decision was not self-evident at the point we began the evaluation process.As previously mentioned we are now moving forward with expediting market availability of the new Palomino Blackwing from our initial run. We expect to have more definitive information next week on pricing and order availability. In the meantime we also have a breif update to our 
Perhaps if enlarged enough one might notice respective comparable differences and gradations of fineness in the consistency of graphite material being deposited throughout a stroke across the paper. As my high resolution digital SLR camera was stolen recently and my replacement not yet arrived we’re just using some simple images in this post, others have already well documented their own experimentations. As I’ll discuss a bit further in a few days when we cover the topic of “Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed” we are not aware of any objective, scientific test equipment used in the industry today for measuring “smoothness” of graphite writing cores. So when it comes to smoothness we must rely on the more subjective experience of our test group, our own personal comparisons and the experience of our supplier.
We also received some questions regarding whether or not we acquired the original formulation and if not why not produce an exact match for the original graphite core down to every last performance detail. Let me state that we have not purchased any technical knowhow associated with the original product specifically including the formulation for the graphite core. The Blackwing has not been produced now in about 12 years. The Lewisburg factory which last produced these cores and finished Blackwing 602 pencils was closed a year ago and production relocated to Newell’s Mexicali facilities. Additionally, our experience is that there has been a high level of turnover in company management and technical personnel over the past 15 years as new acquisitions were integrated, product lines and manufacturing rationalized, successive cost reduction programs implemented, etc. Quite often the most knowledgeable person with respect to production of items such as graphite cores is the actual worker on the production floor. Here formulations may be adjusted based on variations in inbound raw material quality and specific equipment used according to specific knowledge of those floor workers to maintain product within a specified quality range. Given the changes in that company over more than a decade it’s not clear such knowledge and equipment setup at Newell currently exists to perfectly duplicate the original Blackwing lead. Perhaps there may indeed even be a file cabinet somewhere with the specific product formulation; even so it’s unlikely we could have purchased this.So why didn’t we exactly duplicate the formula through reverse engineering with our very experienced supplier in Japan? This is a reasonable question. However, not a simple and inexpensive process, particularly for a product that was traditionally a low volume niche item. The last producer ceased production partially because a machine simply broke. Returning an investment on a niche item becomes an increasing challenge as total development costs increase. While designing our new product, in choosing between “smoothness” comparability vs. “darkness and wear”, I have always believed that smoothness matters the most in matching the Blackwing. Also, as the Blackwing was a traditional favorite of animators and illustrators – where a nice smooth and dark mark is important to these users – I felt best to err on the side of smoothness and softness of feel over an exact hardness & wear match. So in the end we’ve chosen a close match to the original given the higher weighting we put on “smoothness” and also considered where this particular core would fit in relation to our existing Palomino graphite grades. Our overall consumer feedback supports that we have a high performing product reminiscent of the extremely smooth writing performance of both the original Blackwing 602 and comparable to our Palomino quality range. In conclusion, there seems to be some general feeling that if we can improve on the wear rate while maintaining the current smoothness that would result in an ideal lead, though clearly we have received high praise for the product as it now is as well. It’s not clear to me if the mark on paper being darker for some people is a specific criticism or simply a byproduct of a slightly softer lead. Despite the technical and cost challenges I’ve just noted, we’ve already taken some initial steps to investigate possible modifications to address hardness and wear without compromising smoothness to see if we can get to a more exact match to the Original. Indeed, we’ve begun preliminary testing with our supplier on another formulation that could be promissing. We have not received pricing information and no decisions or very thorough technical evaluations have been completed at this point in time. We will have to keep you all posted on this matter as this develops.
