What is Reddit's opinion of The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Nice work. As it happens I am terminally addicted to writing with pencils, and they must be very sharp or I hate them. It's from being a little kid back in first grade in 1954.

I always ended up with the pencil that hand broken leads inside and I would make frequent trips to the pencil sharpener under the steely gaze of Miss Joyce LaPolla, teacher. It was her first job and she thought she was going to change the world starting with me.

I now have a lifetime supply and several electric pencil sharpeners.

There is a wonderful book about the technology of pencils by Henry Petroski. It's well worth a gander. https://www.amazon.com/Pencil-History-Design-Circumstance/dp/0679734155/ref=sxts\_entity\_rec\_bsx\_s\_def\_r00\_t\_aufl?crid=2DQEK6LI2HJ76&cv\_ct\_cx=Henry+Petroski&keywords=Henry+Petroski&pd\_rd\_i=0679734155&pd\_rd\_r=9a78ff57-c...

Yeah, start small. I used to give a lecture on design that was titled 'How to design if you can't afford the paper.' Basically, it said these things. Every step in the process is the same size, it's only when you add the steps together do you get the stairs. Learn how to do every step of the design process. Do not stop at the renderings, or the iterations, or the prototype, do something that you can go all the way from the beginning to the end in. To do that, start small, and if that thing is too big, go smaller. Go as small as you can do and go up from there. A book that I recommended about the process is this -- https://www.amazon.com/Pencil-History-Design-Circumstance/dp/0679734155 and if a pencil is too big, think of the paperclip.

This all applies to LArch as well.

The way NOT to do it is to do a rendering or a bunch of boards for design competitions and to hope something comes of that and they lift you up to the top. Remember what happened to the kid that did the 911 memorial. Or even Maya Lin. While that does happen, it's not how best to learn how to design or to do design thinking. The fact is, most firms don't design. They shop for the clients. I hate the shopping.

Looking at other fields helps too. I am super inspired by the various battles of the chief design officers at top corporations and their epic missteps and failures and of course their successes. Like that of the Pepsi and the Coke rebrand a couple years back. They tend to walk you through their process step by step.

Anyways, I'm super interested in designing and the act of design and design being a thing and at our best I think we too are designers first and foremost and LArch happens to be our medium and nothing more or greater. Good LArchs are essentially legal secretaries. Great LArchs are designers first and foremost.

Actually No. 2 just describes the hardness, and nothing else. But pencils have been evolving a lot over the years. For an interesting (but a little dry) history you can read the book "The Pencil." BTW I didn't downvote you!

Well, I draw and write for a living, so they have meaning in that regard. But, I'm also all learned up on the history ( there's a great book called THE PENCIL here: http://www.amazon.com/Pencil-History-Design-Circumstance/dp/0679734155/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286041816&sr=1-3 ) and I try all different types. Right now, I'm all nerded up over the mono from Tombow.

https://www.amazon.com/Pencil-History-Design-Circumstance/dp/0679734155

This isn't a perfect match, but you might find it interesting.

I really enjoyed the history of the pencil, interesting history of a banal object.