So, my friend went back to Turkiye for a break recently and spotted something cool. He shared a link for a new stationery brand called SimpleSample. They have a whole series of smooth cylindrical pen designs and I was tempted to order one of each just for fun. But! The prices are actually pretty expensive at €14 each, and so I settled on just two items: the 0.7mm Simple.Short pencil in ‘pumpkin’ and ‘ankara white’.
Now, this double knock design came in 0.5 as well, but I thought the relatively large diameter made it well suited to 0.7mm 2B leads for sketching. On their website, they have a Simple.Slim variant that I felt might be better for 0.5mm if I wanted more in the future.
What’s impressive, and probably not in a good way, is how tightly integrated the parts are. It’s like the designers took a page out of the Apple industrial design playbook! I couldn’t unscrew the ‘cone’ at all. But luckily, the steel tip does come off to reveal an honest-to-goodness metal clutch.
Lastly, the packaging did not include any instructions, and so I had to resort to general operating principles to figure out how to refill the pencils. The button comes off by pulling it, but I had to first wonder and attempt ‘unscrewing’ it etc because the fitting was also super tight. No eraser, which might be a deal breaker for some folks, especially considering the MSRP.
Overall, I am quite pleased with the form factor and grown up color palette. The Simple.Short will be perfect next to other modern pieces like the diminutive Uniball One.P, or the MUJI equivalents. Looking forward to a proper pair up in the coming days!
What’s not to like? The NAME. ‘SimpleSample’ sounds like the owners gave up early or just plucked a catch-all ‘lorem ipsum’ placeholder name from a gift catalog template. I kinda wish it wasn’t embossed onto the metal clips!
