Pencil is a natural and expressive tool for drawing, sketching, and writing ideas on Paper by FiftyThree. Unique features include:

Palm Rejection: Adaptive palm rejection instantly knows whether it’s your hand or the Pencil touching the page. Rest your hand on the screen and write at any angle. No calibration or setup.

Erase: Pencil’s unique built-in eraser lets you try anything knowing an eraser is only a flip away.

Blend: Use your finger to smooth rough edges and blend colors directly on the page, and create beautiful color transitions.

Pencil comes in sustainable, hardwood “Walnut,” and “Graphite” in brushed aluminum.

FiftyThree is wholly devoted to the creator, the maker, the original thinker.

FiftyThree’s design challenge for Pencil was three-fold:

Beautiful Craftsmanship:
Today’s iPad market is saturated with passive styli and a few pressure enabled electronic styli. Many styli embody a Pen metaphor in form and strive for precision writing functionality. Our challenge was to design an iconic stylus that stands out from the competition in form and function.

Natural Interaction:
Humans have been trained to use pencils and erasers for centuries. There is a natural flow to how you place a writing tool on paper to freely draw, erase, or blend with your finger. Our challenge was to invent a new stylus and interaction model that mirrors the analog world by allowing Paper to distinguish between Pencil tip, eraser, finger, and palm.

Affordable Luxury:
We want to lower the barrier to create for all creators, from experience to price point. Our challenge was to create a great tool that did not compromise on experience, quality or affordability.

FiftyThree introduced the idea of creative flow to the digital stylus. We wanted creators to freely draw, erase, and blend with one simple tool. A tool that was focused on expressing ideas instead of complex settings, buttons, or connection flow to iPad.

Simplicity was a key in enabling our Creators to focus on creation rather than tool settings or connecting to iPad.

Pencil was designed by a small, collaborative, multidisciplinary team of designers and engineers. Our development process focused heavily in two areas:

Craftsmanship:
Multiple manufacturing methods were experimented with in order to figure out how to machine Pencil’s hollow unibody from a solid piece of walnut at manufacturing scale.

Natural Interaction:
Countless hardware/software prototypes were made to prove out and refine our approach to palm rejection, erasing, and connecting to iPad.

Craftsmanship and Sustainability:
Pencil’s design is inspired by the beloved carpenter pencil, differentiating it as a digital stylus. The form is continuous, balanced, flat for direction, and fits comfortably in the hand. It’s carved from a block of solid FSC certified walnut or hand brushed anodized aluminum, making every Pencil unique. Inlaid logo and parting lines hold tight tolerances, ensuring precision and quality.

Form follows function:
Tip feel - Friction-tuned tip material feels great on a screen.
Tip shape - The tip’s shaped for a wide range of drawing and shading angles.
Connection - Press Pencil’s tip against Paper’s tool tray to connect. Eliminates fussy bluetooth paring.
Stow - Pencil’s flat body allows for magnetic stowing on iPad’s smart cover.
Charge - The battery pulls out with the tip and charges via USB, no extra dongle needed.

Natural Interaction:
Pencil’s tip and eraser sensors and software lets creators freely draw, erase, and blend ink on iPad like you would on analog paper. Our interaction model allows for pen and touch interactions like zooming and writing simultaneously. Designing an analog inspired creative flow to a digital drawing app opens up new possibilities for creators.

Affordable Luxury:
To bring high value to creators at an affordable price, FiftyThree simplified part count and engineering complexity without compromising functionality and quality. For example Pencil’s external body and inner core snap together without the use of screws or extra parts, and Pencil unlocks the Paper tools for free, increasing its value without incurring additional cost.