What kinds of writing and drawing tools would typify Yamaha?

Overview

What makes writing and drawing feel so good

In this thought experiment-style design project, designers from Yamaha and Yamaha Motor collaborated on a common theme. These days, with digital tools firmly entrenched in daily life, we have returned our attention to primitive tools and physical acts. The theme we chose for this project was writing and drawing.
Writing letters and drawing lines is about more than conveying information; the practice is also imbued with the joy of physical self-expression and the pleasure of giving form to our thoughts. When we say that a writing implement “moves,” “flows,” or “glides” across a medium, we evoke the sensations of riding carefree on a motorcycle or bobbing our heads to the rhythm of a song. In this light, writing and drawing are similar to enjoying motion and music in that the experience is rooted in the unity between the body and the tool.
In this project, designers of musical instruments and mobility devices reexamined the act of writing and drawing from their respective perspectives. The pleasing feeling of total control, the joy of improving, and the quiet sense of immersion are values cultivated through musical instruments and mobility devices. By incorporating these values, we explored new possibilities for the act of writing and drawing.
We sought to change writing implements from tools that merely produce letters and images to tools that are simply fun to use. This project was an attempt to reexamine the relationship between the body and tools and propose new experiences for writing and drawing.

Pick-Scribe

A writing instrument that resembles a guitar pick made of graphite, the material of a pencil lead.
Just as guitarists choose their favorite picks based on their style of play, this Pick-Scribe has a variety of shapes, shades, and hardness, allowing you to experience a variety of writing feel, texture and rhythm. By adding depth to the primitive act of writing, it enriches the writer's expression.

Designer: Hinako Matsui/Yamaha Design Laboratory

Swing-Scribe

A pen that moves with a rhythm like a metronome. The design was inspired by a feather pen, which is considered to be one of the oldest pens. As you write, the wobbling feather gives the pen rhythm through a small amount of air resistance.
The Swing-Scribe is a metronome-like pen that creates such a rhythm on purpose. By attaching a weight to the tip of the metal bar, it swings as you write. The small pendulum force caused by the weight and the movement gives a rhythm to the pen and how it flows. By adjusting the position of the weight, you can adjust the swing and resistance, and you can slide the pen on paper in a rhythm to suit your mood at the time.

Designer: Kazuya Washio/Yamaha Design Laboratory

Pluck-Scribe

This design’s motif Sumitsubo (ink pot) is originally a carpenter's tool for drawing straight lines on long pieces of wood. It's like playing pizzicato with a string instrument, with a sense of tension when plucking the string with precision. If the fresh sound coming from the strings is visualized into the lines, they will show various expressions - not only simple straight lines, but trembling lines, bursting lines, vivid lines and so on. It is a tool that can add character to the act of drawing lines.

Designer: Hinako Matsui/Yamaha Design Laboratory

Mix-Scribe

A pen that can produce various shades of color by controlling the mix of two types of ink.
Two ink cartridges are mounted on the main body, and the two inks are pumped up to the tip of the pen by operating the lever like handling a motorcycle, which mixes the colors. By mixing two different colors together you can create your own color, or you can dilute one to create a different strength of color.
Impromptu mixing of colors as your pen flows at will brings pleasure from using the tools.

Designer : Etsuto Mimasu / YAMAHA MOTOR DESIGN

Conquer-Scribe

A sidewalk chalk holder that allows you to freely draw on the surface of any terrain. The part that supports the chalk at the end of the main body works like the front fork of a motorcycle, bifurcated and acting as a shock absorbing suspension. This makes it possible to draw smoothly even on uneven concrete or asphalt. Drawing dynamically on the large surface directly using your whole body is a great feeling, where you are not restricted by the size of paper.

Designer: Tomoya Ikegaya/YAMAHA MOTOR DESIGN

Process

We reimagined the experience of writing and drawing with tools that become one with the body, rather than mere functional writing implements. Guided by the joy of complete mastery and the sensation of our own abilities expanding, we undertook repeated cycles of sketching and prototyping to develop our ideas. We created prototypes for several proposals and refined them into more realistic concepts by verifying their usability and experiential value.