Since I was a young lad, I’ve always loved drawing and coming up with inventions and ideas. In fact, I still have a book of inventions that I started when I was around 6 or 7 and wrapped in tin foil to make it look more ‘futuristic’. I’m also lucky enough to have a Dad who is an incredible inspiration to me. After surviving a terrible car crash at the age of 28 where his heart stopped beating for 10 minutes. He slowly and methodically taught himself how to walk and talk again through sheer grit and persistence.
3 years later he started his own furniture company, with no prior experience of woodworking, and after he and my mum separated he landed a job in Switzerland at one of the best design universities in the world (Art Centre Europe). I would visit him in the school holidays and together we would model airplanes by hand (learning the physics behind and aerofoil as we went), making mouse trap cars, and just doodling our madcap ideas that we would discuss at great length. All of these projects revolved around sketching and doodling and fortunately, my Dad had an amazing stationery collection including Rotring technical pens, Pentel mechanical pencils, French curves, and a vast array of Letraset that kept me occupied for hours. With a big smile on my face, I can still contour up the smell of ink and pencil shavings from the drawer in that he kept his stationery.
I truly believe that the connection between paper, pen, and mind or vice versa is the most effortless and rewarding way of coming up with ideas, sketches or beautiful drawings. And if in any small way, I can enable folks to get the most from this process, by making tools that make it all the more rewarding then I’m all in.