Think about how many
cumulative hours you’ve wasted with pens in your lifetime. You’ve spun them;
you’ve drummed them; you’ve unscrewed them and launched their tops off like
little rockets. The pen’s unimpeachable status as a tool needed to get things
done lets it slide undetected into even the most oppressive fun vacuums -
places like lecture halls and meeting rooms - whereupon it assumes its most
vital function of giving you something to fiddle with. And when it comes to
fiddling, this magnetic pen is a quantum leap beyond your standard plastic Bic.
Dreamed up by Canadian
designer Andrew Gardner, it's made of 12 neodymium magnets.
Polar, as the wonder pen is
called, is a
writing implement made of 12 neodymium magnets. But according to Andrew
Gardner, the man behind the design, distraction was never the goal. “It wasn’t
intended to be something to fiddle with,” he says. “I don’t like calling it a
toy.” Indeed, the unique design does offer some functional benefits. It allows
for a stylus tip to be hidden in the body itself, for one thing. It also lets
the owner customize the implement to his or her desired size. The pen, which
can be pre-ordered for about US$40, was intended to be a “modular platform where
you can add new tips and new cartridges,” Gardner explains. It’s “a really
organic platform for creativity.”
It offers some functional
benefits, like the ability to adjust its size and to conceal a stylus tip for a
touchscreen.
But
you have to imagine that the 8,000-some backers who have already pledged over a
half a million dollars to the project saw something else when they looked at
Polar. They had to have watched the clip showing all the things it can do -
seeing all the mesmerizing magnetic structures it can transform into - and come
to the obvious conclusion: This thing the Sistine Chapel of time wasting.
But it also lets the pen do
some neat tricks.
Gardner,
who works at Indiedesign in
Waterloo, Ontario, has been fascinated with magnets since a young age. He’s
been an avid disassembler of pens for just as long. When those two passions
converged earlier this year, he knew he was onto something right away. “You’d
think it was more of a progression, but it wasn’t actually,” he says.
He found
it to be an elegant solution even before he figured out all of its, erm,
extracurricular potential; the magnets hold everything together, so it requires
no screws and no glue. “When I first came up with the design,” Gardner
explains, “I actually did a lot of looking around, like, ‘how has nobody ever
done something like this. This has to be done by somebody, so I better go do
it.”
“It wasn't intended to be
something to fiddle with,” Gardner says. “I don't like calling it a toy.”
Polar’s fantastic crowd-funded success has come with
its drawbacks. There are already a slew of magnet-pen copycats rushing to
market, and some have tried to peg Polar as a health hazard, throwing it in
with other controversial small magnet products like BuckyBalls, whose fun was
matched only by their swallowability.
And then, of course, there’s the lingering concern
that always comes with carrying a stack of magnets in your pocket: that you run
the risk of messing up some other thing, either wiping the magnetic data off
your credit card or somehow turning your smartphone into an expensive paper
weight. Gardner says he has been carrying one around himself, though, and has
no ill effects to report with his electronics or his credit cards.
Still, the time wasting
potential is hard to deny.
POLAR - in 60 seconds, a pen made out of magnets. from Polar Pen on Vimeo
(Source: Wired Edited. Video 2 added).
No comments:
Post a Comment