Core by Andhand aims at reinventing the design of retractable pens

Simon Donald and Joe Wentworth first met whilst studying Design Products at the Royal College of Art many years ago. Their friendship turned into a business as they established the product and industrial design consultancy DonaldWentworth in 2013. Since then, their work with clients such as Joseph Joseph and Artemide has won them various accolades, including three Red Dot design awards. Out of their “love of all things stationery” they recently established the brand Andhand as a sister company to their design consultancy. With their first big project, Core, they try to reimagine the design of the classic retractable pen, drawing inspiration from the mechanism of the craft knife. 
While their Kickstarter for Core is drawing to a successful close, we asked them to tell us more about their idea, their interest in stationery design, and their pick on the future of hand writing in the digital era.

How did you come up with the idea of Core?
Taking a retractable pen apart one day to change the refill I found myself spending 5 minutes crawling around on the floor trying to find a vital spring which had just projected itself across the studio in the process. This got us thinking: how many of the parts inside a pen were even necessary? Could we design a pen with far fewer parts that you didn’t even need to disassemble to change the refill? We looked to other simpler retracting movements for inspiration and the classic craft knife did a lot of what we wanted, it also did it in a way that felt brutally honest. We borrowed a certain amount from this along with introducing some of our own clever engineering. How has the experience of Joseph Joseph contributed to this design project?
As a longstanding client of ours Joseph Joseph would always push us for really innovative approaches to everyday objects. The outcomes needed to also be delightful and a pleasure to use. This was a constantly challenging process and we have adopted the same philosophy in our own projects for Andhand.

To me the retractable pen feels a bit like the umbrella: nobody has ever successfully introduced a new design because it’s been somehow perfected to its design limits. So why did you choose the retractable pen as an object to try and redesign?
Well, if you don’t try you will never know. You don’t need to be solving the biggest problems in every design you do, but one thing I know is that with Core I will no longer be searching for any lost springs!  We also wanted to design a really durable pen with a refined and readable aesthetic that felt good in the hand and was a pleasure to use. Also for a stationery brand a pen seemed to be a good place to start. Do you think this type of retractable mechanism could see wider adoption, or do you think it will remain a niche option?
I think Core is something people have to experience to fully grasp. It’s got really great haptic feedback and with all good pens is great to fidget with – without thought I would often find myself fidgeting with it when at my desk, clicking back and forth whilst my mind is someplace else. It’s really nice to have removed complexity from the traditional retractable pen. It still does what all other retractable pens do – write and retract, but it feels like a more honest and paired back execution.

How scalable is it, from an industrial design perspective?
We are working with very known processes, the outer body is a custom extrusion which is then machined and anodised for instance. Founding Andhand on a very limited budget meant for one thing that we couldn’t be working with unknowns or pushing the limits on materials or processes at this point. Also funding the project through Kickstarter meant that it should be something we could produce with little tooling investment for the best chance to get the project off the ground and running. Core’s design exposes the pen tip more than traditional designs. How do you tackle the problems that might arise from this, such as ink spills?
Yes, the exposed tip is very much a part of its character. When in the writing position the overall form of the pen is really not that unfamiliar at all, save for the constant band of colour contrast down its centre which gives a visual clue — in all terms and purposes it essentially looks like a pen. Then when you retract the pen it’s quite a transformation, suddenly it’s something a little out of the ordinary but with a very readable function. A retractable pen wouldn’t be a retractable pen unless it retracted well and protected the tip. The slot along the length of Core is a little over 4mm wide and people often assume that as they can see the tip of the pen when it is retracted that it is prone to damage or a hazard. This is really not the case, we have tested and tested this and you actively have to force items into the pen for any sort of adverse effect.

As designers, what is your take about writing by hand with an ink pen in the digital age?
I use all sorts of tools in my profession both digital and analogue, but always by my side is a notebook and pen. I feel analogue tools offer a greater connection to the user. Not only the physical feedback you get from them, but there is also the emotional value that they hold. A pen is something that you can own and enjoy for a lifetime but with the planned obsolescence of digital products we are constantly being forced to update and consume. Do you think we will ever get rid of pen and paper?
I think we all know that feeling you get when you receive a hand written note from someone and I don’t think this can ever be outdone. Even if you are a total digital consumer, at some point your battery will die - what are you going to reach for? What are your future plans for Andhand?
We have been working on a few new products that we hope to launch next year, we will grow the collection to offer durable and refined stationery offerings for the entire desktop, and hopefully have a lot of fun along the way.