Editing The Pen Addict 635/transcript (section)

== Overview of Blackwing product lines and special editions. ==

* Because they did. So Blackwing has several different product lines. So they have their standard product line, which is where you find the Blackwing Pearl or the Blackwing 602 or the Blackwing Extra Fine. Okay. That's their stock lineup. Then they have the Blackwing Volumes lineup, which is their quarterly special editions, where they'll do, you know, basically storytelling around a pencil and do a release. And then outside of those two things, they do small batch or limited runs. And this was like their throwback series. So they've done, I don't know, three or four. They don't schedule these. They're just more random. Where they've gone back into the Blackwing archives, picked out a design of a pencil and mimicked essentially the aesthetic of the pencil and released that under the Eras lineup. And they call them a, they changed the name a little, little bit. Because that's what's confusing. Okay. That's, that's confusing though, right? Like if it's the same product name, but it's a different pencil each time they do it. Like it feels like it would be like Blackwing Eras blank, you know, like you'd come up with like the third name. That's weird. That's why it's actually hard for me to pin down the exact one that I have. I think they do change some of the names a little bit. I'm sure they have a skew to change, but it doesn't seem like the packaging that you have indicates anything. Right, right. So like other ones will be different colors and different, different designs, but yeah. So it's just like a little playground, not really like a labs type situation. They actually have a fourth situation that's pretty much like a labs type of situation. So yeah, they're a little bit all over the place. I've got to say, hats off to Blackwing that they can, you know what I mean? Like they can make so many freaking pencils. Like I respect that.
* And charge a premium. Yeah. Because they're good, honestly. Like just straight up, whatever you might think about Blackwings that they're, you know, overpriced or rip off. Oh, well. I mean, like per pencil, they're very expensive. Everyone I pick up is legitimately good. Like right. Good writing. Like the graphite cores they use are some of my favorite. Now that I say that, I remember my number one pencil would be the Mitsubishi 9850, the office pencil. And then probably like, you know, this Blackwing Air is the Tombow Mono. The Arrows has, the one that I have has the 602 core, which is kind of like the mid-range in firmness for their product lineup. So yeah, it's good. It's good stuff. I like, I really like everything that Blackwing does. So I'm not necessarily a super fan. Like I don't, I haven't, I don't keep up with them. But every time I use one, I love it. And I was like, yeah, this is great.
* All right. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, you can stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience and sell your products, services, even the content that you create. Squarespace has everything you need all in one place, all on your terms. Make the most of design intelligence from Squarespace. It combines two decades of industry-leading design experience of cutting-edge AI technology to unlock your strongest creative potential. Design intelligence empowers anyone to build a beautiful, more personalized website tailored to their unique needs and craft a bespoke digital identity to use across one's entire online presence. And Squarespace Payments is the easiest way to manage your payments in one place. Onboarding is fast and simple. Get started in just a few clicks and start receiving payments right away. Plus, give your customers more ways to pay by choosing from popular payment methods like Klarna, ACH, Direct Debit, Apple Pay, Afterpay, and Clearpay, depending on where you're located. You can make the most of Blueprint AI and start a fully custom on-brand website with Squarespace's latest AI website builder, Blueprint AI. After a few questions, their interactive design system transforms basic information about your brand or business into an elevated online presence with curated premium quality content automatically added and matched to your profile and aesthetic. I think this is a really interesting thing for Squarespace. They've always been about making it as easy as possible for you to get a website off the ground and to take all of the work that they have done for decades at this point about building websites and to make that even easier for you. You know, you can still go in and tweak everything to your heart's content, but to really get you started with something personal that you can build upon, I think this is really interesting. Go to squarespace.com and sign up for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash penaddict and you'll save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That is squarespace.com slash penaddict when you decide to sign up and you'll get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the show. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of Relay. All right, Myke, we have our shout out of the week. Shout out of the week. I realized that this is our only pen link in this entire episode, but I wanted to make sure to give a shout out to Gourmet Pens Club, the podcast of Gourmet Pens, their second anniversary. Happy anniversary to Aziza and Candice. But most importantly, I want to give a shout out to Chi, their producer, who does amazing work wrangling these other two. I don't know how they get a show out every other week between Aziza and Candice, except the wonderful production and scheduling and keeping them on track that Chi does. I know they just have to get more credit than even the talent on that show. Their producer is what makes this show. So I just wanted to put it out there. Happy anniversary to Chi, especially on the Gourmet Pens Club podcast. Who's our producer, Brad?
* Toby, my dog. Good stuff. He has a lot of jobs. He's the shipping department manager. Yep. Podcast producer. He's the podcast producer. Package delivery security. He does the checks of all the packages and the alerts when the deliveries happen. And podcast producer, we've added podcast producer. I'm worried about burnout for Toby. This is a lot on the plate. Well, don't worry too hard because I'm staring at him hard, hard asleep over here. So he must feel that the show is going to go okay. You know, that's where he's at. What can I play on? He's like, I laid out the show, so we're just going to let the humans talk and he's going to take a little nap. And he'll check in on the editing afterwards, see how the schedule is going to go. See when we're going to get this to drop. But yeah, he really makes sure we get everything going here. So shout out, Toby.