These two are doing something right.
The business end of pencils is probably the part that matters most to me, aesthetically. A pencil design can do a lot right in other areas, but if it messes up the design of the tip or grip, count me out.
With respect to the tip, most of my favorite designs have stepped cones and cylinders in combination. A plain cone bores me (Tikky, P20X) and concave cones (Technica X, Ergonimix, lots of custom wood barrel pencils) turn me off. Concave cones are mentally stimulating (Orenz), but I don’t particularly like them. And I find stepped cylinders without cones to be a bit too austere (Ohto Promecha, Staedtler 925 95).
And for the grip, I think designs without a designated grip area suffer aesthetically. The absence of a grip area may be the primary reason I don’t gravitate toward executive pencils. Imagine a knurled grip on a Pentel 5…
I prefer cylindrical grips with a straightforward tactile pattern extending the full length of the grip. No gradient in the pattern and no randomness in the pattern.
Jumping off my soapbox now.
