#HTE

Beyond Object’s Align Pen: Fix the Form to Deploy the Tip

These are three of the pens roaming around my desk that I’ll grab when I need to sketch something. I don’t love any of them but I got them all for free.

They’re all ballpoints that deploy the tip when a portion of the pen is rotated. That’s a nifty and timeless feature, but London-based design firm Beyond Object has done the classic mechanism one better, adding a visual and tactile trick that gives you the satisfaction of correcting the pen’s interrupted form in order to deploy the tip:

Called “Align,” the $70 pen ain’t cheap, but I like the thinking behind it. If only Autodesk handed these out at the conventions….