Something I See (and use) Everyday

The “something” I see every day is my mechanical pencil.  I also use it every day.  I prefer pencil to pen because I can erase anything I don’t need.

I chose an object rather than a piece of art, a poster, or something obviously “visual”.  I love artwork.  I love color.  I love expression.  But when I was looking around for the item I was going to photograph, my eye kept going to my trusty pencil.  

Looking at my pencil, I can see that it has a bold, blue color.  It’s also clear plastic in spots so you can see the mechanical workings of the pencil.  That in itself is interesting.  Most mechanical pencils are solid color metal or plastic.  In the kind I prefer, I can see the inner mechanism for advancing the lead and even though the blue is bold, it also has some transparency to it and you can see the eraser portion as well.  I’m a bit of a geek (okay, a lot of geek), and this appeals to me.  It is also a 0.9mm lead pencil and you can see that the leads in the reservoir are thicker than a normal mechanical pencil.  I prefer bold lines, so I prefer thicker leads in a pencil.  I can also see that the rubber grip looks comfortable.

But even more than the actual pencil itself, the meaning I derive from it is so much more.  I can create visuals with that pencil.  I can’t really draw, but I do write.  And I could create entire worlds with that pencil if I wanted to.  More realistically, that pencil helps me think.  I can write out what’s in my mind and make sense of my thought process when I’m analyzing data at work.  Or trying to draft a sensitive letter.  Or brainstorming with coworkers on workflow changes.  At one point in my job, I was spearheading a project to get us onto our current computer system.  I put up a number of posterboards and sketched out the old workflows, and then the new ones with that pencil.  I encouraged other members of my department to add things to the posterboards.  In our text, White Space is Not Your Enemy, the authors talk about Fluent Thinking (p.16).  That pencil encouraged that Fluent Thinking!

There was something that really stood out to me in the Brian Kennedy Ted Talk.  At one point, he says, “I’ve been finding our text scholars saying, ‘Everything’s a text!’  And I’m equally imperious, because I’m saying, ‘Everything’s an image.’ “  And he’s right.  You can write anything you want, but if your audience cannot read, it’s meaningless.  I think of the illustrated manuscripts that came out of the middle ages.  They were beautiful pieces of art – and they were written text.  Poetry, stories and novels can create so much visual beauty by their actual words.  Words ARE images and can evoke powerful meaning and powerful emotions.

So, there’s the actual physical appearance of the pencil.  And then there is so much more meaning to what it is and what it is capable of.  Such a simple object with such infinite possibility.