Editing The Pen Addict 426/transcript (section)

== Blackwing XIX Design ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' I think it looks better than the old one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't know. I haven't formulated my thoughts. It is, when I think of Blackwing, I don't think of the utmost of modern design. Okay. And that's what that logo represents to me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But wouldn't you say that their recent products have given them the ability to do that?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. I think they're going in that direction. Right. Which is why the logo design was changed. And I don't disagree with it. I just, I don't love it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't dislike it at all. Like, it affects me none. Like, I'm not going, oh, this is terrible. But I can't pinpoint why I don't love it. I just like it. It's fine. What I don't like is the new square boxes. I would rather have the flat pack boxes on pencils. But that's neither here nor there. Like, none of these, none of these things matter. But I will say I don't love the new logo. And I can't pinpoint it. It doesn't hit right for me. But I can't really explain why. But I don't dislike it either. Right. So.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I guess the other thing I would say is I'm not like, it's just like an interesting thing to me. I don't have like a super strong opinion one way or the other. But it doesn't like appear from their product pages that they're like donating any proceeds to anything for this edition.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think they are because they usually do it for every edition.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, they do? Oh, cool then. Yeah. Because just it would be weird to me to create something about like a very clearly political issue. Yeah. Of which there are still issues and not make a donation, you know? Yeah. I couldn't see it on the product page, but.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I'll double check. Usually they list it pretty clearly. But almost every release has some type of tie in, which is another great thing about the company as a whole. They definitely believe in that. That's great. I mean, hopefully that's the case for this one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I would just find that personally a little bit like weird to be like we're going to make a very political statement.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And then that's that. Right. It kind of feels it would feel like profiting on it rather than honoring it and then using it as an ability to to do something. So they do not.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They do not have a history of profiting off a thing like this. Yeah. Their history is that they will also put their money where their mouth is and their design decisions.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So it says a portion from the sales of all Blackwing products benefit the Blackwing Foundation, which funds and develops arts and music education at the K-12 level.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So they usually do separate things, though, individually. Like I think they did one for the Ravi Shankar one. I think they had a specific donation, even though that was music related as well. Right. We can look into it and see.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't need us to dive into it. Like if they have a history of it and I assume that they will do whatever it is they want to do, but they'll put some money to a good place. Right. That was it. But like I didn't really know about that too much because I don't pay attention to Blackwing as much. Right. But that's good because I mean, do you know what I mean? Like it would be a little weird. Right. Yeah. Because it's like we're making this political statement. Please buy our product. Thank you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You know, I feel like I would want to see some action from that, too, which is great that they are.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah. They are pretty well known for their charitable endeavors. So like I have faith that they're going to do the right thing. That's why I don't look as much because I assume they're going to do the right thing because that's what they've built since the beginning.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They have a history of it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Cool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So I want to talk. This is a little bit interesting businessy stationary topic. And this is the portion of the show where I fawn over Daryl from Misubi and his cheeks probably just turned red for me embarrassing him like that. But he sent out a newsletter that I just wanted to talk about newsletters in general, like retailer newsletters and how a lot of retailers could learn from Daryl. I learned a lot from Daryl. Daryl's beliefs and my beliefs in how operations should be run with utmost transparency and honesty and talking to people as if you're talking to human beings, not consumers or bank accounts. And I think what Daryl has always executed in his business has been that. And then to have this example of this newsletter that I'll be honest, it goes on and on and on. It's a very lengthy newsletter.