Seen in the wild Archives

Rapidograph designs

Leave a Comment / Koh-I-Noor, Rotring, Seen in the wild / By memm

A fun fact involving pens, taken from the current issue (240) of Retro Gamer: The original design of the Atari logo was created using Radiograph pens.

One constant in the Atari story is its striking logo, long referred to as Fuji after its resemblance to the Japanese mountain. In 1972, Evelyn Seto was a production artist, working for George Opperman who had produced the original design, and it was her task to create the artwork for printing. “This was pre-computers, so it was done by hand,” she explains. “I had to draw and ink the symbol using tools such as French curves and Rapidograph technical drawing pens. We used the font style Harry for ‘ATARI’.
Retro Gamer 240, p. 23

The question is whether these were Rotrings or Koh-I-Noors. It seems more likely they were Rotrings. As far as I know the Rapidograph had been around for around two decades at that time.

This blog post contains embedded Flickr images.

A dotty Noris

2 Comments / Pencils, Seen in the wild, Staedtler / By memm

The Lego dots set number 41957 features what looks to me like a Staedtler Noris.

Perceptions may vary, so you might not see a Noris there, but with Lego being from Denmark, where the Noris is common, I think there is a good chance that a Noris was the inspiration for Lego’s Dots pencil.

A snowy Lumograph

2 Comments / Seen in the wild, Staedtler / By memm

If you are filming a movie or TV series set in the last fifty years and need a pencil to be used on screen, then Staedtler’s Mars Lumograph is not a bad choice at all: The Lumograph is available in many countries – unlike some other Staedtler pencils, for example the Noris that is extremely popular in some countries, but unavailable in others…

In the USA the Lumograph has been available for many decades. Lexikaliker previously showed an ad for this pencil from the 1950s.

Season 5 of the TV series Snowfall, set in LA in 1986, shows the main characters using the Lumograph. Nice!

Not fit for a king

3 Comments / Parker, Seen in the wild / By memm

Not every pen is fit for a king, as can be seen in this article from The Guardian: ‘Oh god I hate this’: King Charles expresses frustration over leaking pen

His mother seems to have had more luck with pens. In recent days it wasn’t uncommon to see footage showing Queen Elizabeth II signing documents. This often included footage showing her using what seems to be the Parker 51.

Queen Elizabeth II using what seems to be a Parker 51

Not only her pen, also her ink was probably from Parker, as described in this blog post that was posted here in 2018: Stationery Factlets #3: The Queen’s Ink

A lucky Noris

Leave a Comment / Pencils, Seen in the wild, Staedtler / By memm

Despite being set in the USA, Skydance’s ^[1]The company behind Top Gun: Maverick, Jack Reacher and Star Trek Beyond (i.e. Star Trek 13) new animation “Luck” features what seems to be a Staedtler Noris.

In case you wonder why a Noris, or should that be ‘a 3D model of a Noris’, made it into this scene: The movie was produced by an animation studio in Madrid which explains the appearance of a very common European pencil in a story set in the USA.

This sighting has been added to the Noris in the Wild page.

I believe that the use of the the screen shot of this pencil, taken from the movie “Luck” falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

References[+]

References
↑1	The company behind Top Gun: Maverick, Jack Reacher and Star Trek Beyond (i.e. Star Trek 13)