Ep.22: Design and School Supplies

Design is everywhere. Advertising uses phrases and visuals to elicit emotion from a consumer. Architecture is the process of designing structures that best fit its needs. Certain games use dailies and rewards to keep players playing. In this blog I'll go on at length about the genius and infuriating features of a few common school supplies/brands, an idea that *definitely* not from me getting elementary-school craft flashbacks at 10:30pm. 

Permanent Markers (Sharpies)

Sharpies are the core essence of every visual craft. Every clumsy outline from a first-grade art project, hastily made sign, and handwritten label of an obscure cardboard box seems to have used Sharpies. The brand "Sharpie" is often said in place of "permanent marker"; Every other pen seems to resemble it in some way. And yes, though Sharpies were not the first to create a sort of "marker pen", the Sharpie company does hold a patent for its design.

I am one of the proud minority that thinks Sharpies smell good. Yes, the ink might have solvents such as ethylene, glycol monobutyl, ether, and alcohols thrown in, but....wait *checks online* possibly harmful to breathe in? Oh.........

(Sharpies are certified to be safe by an organization called The Art and Creative Materials Institute, or ACMI, which regulates art supplies for safety. However, the members of the organization are all companies, and the organization gets paid for their membership....so that seems like some conflict of interest.)

Anyways, Sharpies are quite nice. The classic "fine point" Sharpie is a nice size to hold, with a decent pen thickness and shade. The pen cap with the hook-thingy is useful for stopping the Sharpie from rolling away on crowded desks. The cursive logo is distinctive, with a handwriting style elegant yet readable which reflects the versatility of such markers. I only wish the felt pen tip was more durable as it tends to get sad and flat with constant use, which doesn't affect drawing too much but is irritating.

Also, according to the Sharpie official website, what constitutes a permanent marker has nothing to do with how long it lasts; the marker counts as permanent if it "Adheres to most surfaces and/or is water resistant.", and "Uses dyes or pigments." That means a good-quality pencil crayon, which is water-resistant and uses pigments, counts as a "permanent marker" according to Sharpie!

Glue Sticks (Elmer's)

Another iconic part of childhood, mainly for the frustration these semi-sticky tubes gave me when I was trying to stick together two whole pieces of paper but the glue kept drying while I was applying it. For a product that is supposed to be a less messy alternative of liquid glue, these made a huge mess.

Packaging-wise, these are nice. Mathematically, circles enclose the most area with the least perimeter, meaning the tube shape uses the least materials while providing the most glue inside. Compared to the Sharpie's logo, the Elmer's logo feels more old-fashioned and functional, with the orange colour reminding me of a construction site. The bull makes me think of hard work, which ironically is the opposite of what happens during a kindergarten art project. I also like the ridges on the cap because they feel nice (no other reason).

However, being round makes it easy for this stick to roll off tables, which has happened to me many times before. Also, putting on/taking off a glue cap gets way harder with continued use, as bits of glue get squished out of the main tube. Maybe I was irresponsible as a child.

Though I could not find information about its glue sticks, Elmer's liquid glue is mainly made of polyvinyl acetate, or PVAc, a sort of temperature-sensitive rubber. It is also used in water-based paint. Poly means multiple, and vinyl acetate has a formula of C₄H₆O₂, meaning it is a combination of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. That was totally irrelevant, I just wanted to talk about chemistry for a second (I had a recent test on writing compounds).

The real issue is how glue sticks are awkwardly too sticky for everything unnecessary yet not sticky enough to what I need to stick. If the glue was more functional, like its arch-nemesis liquid glue, I'd accept the occasional mess when crafting. If it was less sticky, the glue might be a decent temporary adhesive that's safe for chaotic toddlers to play with. But it feels unacceptable that I have to struggle so much and inevitably get glue on my fingers for something that falls apart sometimes within weeks. And I know that glue sticks can do better; I've seen it with other brands such as 3M. So why, Elmer's? Why must every child subjected to your brand suffer?

Fun fact: Elmer the bull canonically had two children with Elsie the cow (the mascot of the dairy division of the same company) named Beulah and Beauregard in the 1940s(?). Company collabs were so much better back then.

Mechanical Pencil Lead Containers (Studio)

(Yes, these choices are getting weirder.)

There is a concept in design called planned obsolescence. This a strategy used by businesses where a product is designed to become obsolete by a certain time, encouraging customers to keep buying new things. For example, new cars that have negligibly more features replacing old ones within years, or tech impossible to fix *ahem* those unobtainable batteries needed to fix that one whack-a-mole toy I loved when I was a kid *ahem*, generating immense waste for the world and profits for companies. 

I despise the lead containers I have, and regret buying them. They are the combination of wasteful package design and planned obsolescence. I bought these lead refills at Dollarama in a 5-pack. Five small containers, each about 7 centimetres long, one and a half centimetres wide, and half a centimetre tall. That's about 5.25 cubic centimetres of space per plastic (with no indication of being recyclable) container. 

There are twelve pieces of lead per container.

They could have fit so, so much more in each container. The lead takes up almost no space inside, and at this point I'm convinced that I could fit the lead in all five containers into one, with more room to spare. And yet the product designers created the containers to be like this, just so they could squeeze out a little more profit out of people.

In addition, the package design is horrid. The font has nonexistent personality and seems to squeeze out all the space on each container, as if they need to cover every surface of the already black-tinted plastic to hide how few pieces of lead there are. The container also says the graphite inside is "Black", which it isn't. It's grey, like every other piece of lead. Unless they were referring to the package in an act of confusing wording. These containers take the prize for the worst piece of stationery I have. 

(To be fair, the containers have a pretty nice opening system, means you never have to search for the container cap, but it still feels like a waste of plastic.)

Anyways, thanks for reading this and I hope you learned something new :)

-Tomatobean