Editing The Pen Addict 221/transcript (section)

== RSTPA ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Do you want to round out with some RSTPA today?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, let's do it because we haven't done it for a couple of weeks now. I've saved several of the questions that I wanted to get to. Some I can rapid fire. Some I want to spend a few minutes on. And like this first one, which is from Carrie, not Fountain Pen Day Carrie, but hey, Fountain Pen Day Carrie, if you're listening, this one's not from you. It says, hello, Myke and Brad. I'm one of those people who loves your podcast, even if I'm not a pen addict myself. I'm looking to buy my first fancy pen for the express purpose of wireframing. I like to draw up my websites and actually draw code before I touch a computer. I was wondering what a good pen would be for drawing straight lines and drawing tiny notes. Something that is precise and very easy to handle. I have shaky hand and I grip pens too hard so it'd need to be comfortable as well. Looking through the pen websites is a bit daunting. There's so much selection. Keep up the good show, Carrie. So that's a great email. This is the kind of email I love. And there used to be, I've already responded to Carrie via email.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And there used to be this site years ago where a designer ran a blog where he reviewed the pens that he did wireframes with and I couldn't find it. I searched and searched and searched. I could not find it. But I gave Carrie three general recommendations which were number one, the Secura Pigma Micron. I'm looking for something that has a lot of various tip sizes and black ink and that has archival ink properties and has a durable tip enough to where he can use it with a ruler if he needs to. So that's the first one that came to mind. Also the Stadler pigment liner. Essentially the same pen. Just depends on your aesthetic preferences. Some prefer one over the other. The second one I gave him was the Oto Graphic liner which has a full metal tip. It doesn't have the felt, I mean the plastic tip like the Secura and Stadler. But it's also permanent. It's also pitch black and they also have very, very, very fine lines.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' If you get the right size, you get the smallest size with that. The third one I gave is the Pilot High Tech C which is used by a lot of designers for this exact thing. That needle, anything with a needle point, if you notice, I didn't give him any like conical tips. That's much more conducive to running against a ruler in a straight fashion.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, you keep the lines straighter because you don't have that variance that you get in the cone tip. and then when you're not using the ruler, you definitely have a better line of sight for the needle even though, you know, it's arguable. It's not that much. Then I mentioned one thing to him which I actually thought of while I was typing it and something I wasn't aware of years ago when I was first answering this question. But these days, I see a lot of wireframe work with color and the Copic system for something like that because you can get the very fine black tip. They're metal tip. They're refillable. They're expensive. You're going to pay a premium for these pens. But they allow you if you're using the black to do your framing and then you need to add splashes of color, their marker systems will draw over these markers without bleed or anything. Like you can do all kinds of cool touches and stuff like that. So those were my recommendations for like a wireframing setup. So those are all pens that I love, pens I like and it was really, really good email. I enjoy, I especially enjoy seeing someone, hey, I love your show. I'm not really a pen addict but I just like, listen, that's cool. We get that sometimes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I like that. The only thing that came to my mind which is not even answering the question would be a Rotary 600. Yeah. It's totally out there because obviously it's not a pen, it's a pencil but I feel like if this is the type of work you're doing, doing it in pencil at least to begin might be a good idea. Yeah. So I recommend the Rotary 600 for that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And that's the clear choice. I completely agree with that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So I think you should add this to your arsenal even if you're looking to go pen at the end, carry. I think having a Rotary 600 would be a really great addition to that to allow you to do a little bit of extra or a little bit of work or a little bit of like pre-work or whatever and you can kind of go over it if you need to. Yeah, that's great. That would be my recommendation. All right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So the next one is and these are from a week or more ago on Twitter a bunch of the hashtag Ask TPA questions. You can always reach us on Twitter at hashtag Ask TPA. We have a script that pulls in all the files and gets them ready for us for the show. So the Idea Pump wants to know why there's no love for the Zebra F301 compact in the EDC community. What did it do to be ignored? So I wanted to bring this up because the 301 is actually a very popular pen. You can get it at all kinds of stores on the store shelf grocery stores office supply stores everywhere. The problem with it for the EDC community is the grip is really really bad. It's this hard plastic attempted kind of knurling thing and it's just crummy. And the Zebra F701 has a full stainless steel barrel and a stainless steel knurled grip and it costs twice as much as the 301 but that twice as much means it costs $6 instead of $3. So the F701 is going to win that battle every time in the EDC community just because of the way the grip is made for the F301. It's a good pen. I see a lot of people use it in an office environment but for a carry pen it's going to lose nearly every time to the F701. Right, Myke?

'''Myke Hurley:''' I don't know anything about these.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know, I know that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I've never even seen them before.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's why I wanted to answer it because it's a question that comes up a lot.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Alright, so this one you can help me out with and I think I know your answer but I want to elaborate on it a little bit more. so I guess I probably should have gotten real names on some of these but this is at Kotelid. It's not really spelled like it sounds but I'm going to go with that. He asks you and I which pen and or notebook subscription do you recommend preferably EU based because I am in Greece thank you very much.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I can't help. I don't know any.