Deconstructing Product Design

Dixon Ticonderoga Pencil

Joseph Dixon Crucible Company, 1913

1. Affectionately known to most as the “yellow No. 2 pencil,” the Dixon Ticonderoga was first introduced to American schools in 1872, and has since become the iconic pencil. Joseph Dixon did not invent the pencil, but he invented pencil automation, helping make a dry, clean, and portable high-quality writing implement available to the masses. Although it may be easy to look past pencils today, to take them for granted, it is important to see the pencil through a historical lens. Then, and only then, can one see and appreciate the product as the Dixon Ticonderoga Company clearly does, as more than a mere writing instrument, but as an indispensable recorder of thoughts and feelings. ...