The Golden Ratio is a mathematical ratio often found in nature, art, and design. It gives the world around us composition and symmetry that, for reasons we don’t fully understand, we find beautiful. It appears in the spiral of a seashell, the uncurling of a fern, and many other natural structures. When applied to the arts, it becomes a tool for creating balanced, organic works.

The Golden Ratio can be heard in the arrangements of Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach. It can be felt in the syllabic patterns of Sanskrit poetry. It can be seen in the works of artists and architects from Salvador Dali to Frank Lloyd Wright. It can even be applied in your day to day life by framing a portrait using photography’s “Rule of Thirds.”

The Blackwing 55 celebrates the Golden Ratio. It’s a reminder to slow down and savor the beauty around us. Each pencil contains our balanced graphite and features a design inspired by the Fibonacci sequence, a series of numbers that approximate the Golden Ratio. The width of each color block is the sum of the widths of the previous two color blocks: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, & 55. We designed it in millimeters and then scaled the design up to 1:1.175 ratio to fit the canvas of the pencil. A simple formula with a magnificent result. 

All Blackwing pencil products conform to ASTM D-4236.