The BBH pencil

I was honoured to be gifted this pencil when a group of students and I visited the advertising agency BBH in New York a few years ago. BBH, or Bartle Bogle Hegarty to give it it's Sunday name, is a terrific agency, producing great work in London, New York and elsewhere. I love their mantra - 'when the world zigs, zag' - go the other way, walk the road less-travelled, follow the thinkers and the geniuses who turn left when we all turn right. BBH's NY offices are something else too, awesome interiors, and offering breathtaking views up midtown across an uncharacteristically flatter part of Manhattan. Inspirational inside and out.

I was in a meeting on Friday and took notes on my iPhone. It was pretty effortless, but I much prefer a pencil (propeller, preferably) and Moleskine. I take notes in spidergram mode, starting in the middle of the page and branching out. I'm also quite the doodler, not a distracted mind, but an attempt to stay focused. We talk about products and how they outlive their usefulness in the electronic age, but for many of us, the humble pencil still has it's place, still somewhat front and centre.

While I haven't used the BBH pencil, I love the simple concept thinking on it - no, ok, good, great. The more you work, the more you use the pencil, the greater the outcome. The sketch, the scamp, the doodle, encompassing the doubt through to the idea to fruition. I love the idea of process encapsulated in the pencil. In a class on Friday looking at corporate identity, we touched on colour. One group explored green, from basics to use in pop culture. They mentioned grass of course, but do you know how they described it? 'Green is the colour of growing grass.' Not grass, but growing grass, as process, as evolution. That was zag thinking. And so it is with the pencil, highlighted in the four simple words and in the black sheep.

I'm keeping the pencil as a memento, and as inspiration to think differently, and to zag when the rest are zigging.