Blackwing Blog

John Steinbeck was very particular about his pencils. In addition to his 24 pencil ritual, John was also conscious of the length of his pencils. Once his pencils reached a certain length, commonly referred to as “the Steinbeck...

John Steinbeck was known for writing his novels out by hand. Later in his career, however, he was forced to introduce a typewriter into his daily routine. John’s son Thom shared what brought about this change, and how...

To round out the first year of the Blackwing Volumes program, we wanted to pay tribute to one of our personal heroes, John Steinbeck. Designed under the guidance of his son, accomplished author Thomas Steinbeck, we’ve attempted to...

He entered the room with a presence befitting of his pedigree. His slicked-back hair and low-cropped beard had long since conceded their color, but his eyes were still piercing blue. His baritone was rugged but gentle: “I understand...

With the reveal, the focus was on what was on the pencil; how we took the entirety of Georges Mélies’ A Trip to the Moon and fit it on a pencil. Today, we’re going to look at how...

Using a process known as movie barcoding, we condensed A Trip to the Moon into individual bands of color (shout out to Melvyn over at Arcane Sanctum for his awesome open source movie barcoding program). We then set out...

It turns out, Blackwing has more ties to John Muir than just the new 211 edition pencil.

When we started brainstorming ideas for our second Volumes edition, we knew we wanted to show a different side of the program. The 725 was a musician’s pencil: loud and in your face. The 211 is just the...