The only pens I'm willing to spend my hard-earned dollars on
This is You Won't Regret It, a weekly column featuring recommendations, tips, and unsolicited advice from the Mashable culture team.
I'm a sucker for a good pen.
I blame it on my father, who is also a sucker for a good pen. But until recently, my father and I couldn't agree on what constitutes a perfect pen-- that is, until we both came across the Sakura Pigma Micron.
It's a mouthful of a pen name, I know, but it's worth remembering. Next time you realize that an attachment to technology has left you missing the feel of an actual writing utensil, reach for a Micron.
As a Casual Doodler eager to one day graduate to Amateur Doodler, Micron pens have been the perfect tool to help me make my dreams come true — and I'm not the only one who loves them.
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There are a few things I look for when I'm ready to buy a new pen: size, ink, cost, and the ~feeling~ I get when I use it for a range of purposes, from a doodle on the back of a receipt to a harrowing journal entry.
Pigma's Micron pens come in six glorious widths, from 0.15 mm point to 0.50 mm, which is all the range I need. As I stick mostly to words or line drawings, this range is *chef's kiss* perfect. The tip the perfect size, it's lightweight, and its length is wonderful, too.
Before I became a Pigma enthusiast, I was a die-hard fan of the smooth G2 Pilot pens, except for the ink's tendency to smudge. My palm is the problem, and if yours also drags across the paper as you write, please step away from the G2. I've almost never had a smudge problem with my Micron pens, regardless of which size I've grabbed. Perhaps it's because the ink in Pigma pens were initially made "specifically for museum archivists and conservators," according to Pigma Micron's website. They're permanent and waterproof, but just a fair warning: they don't work well on surfaces besides paper.
While all of the above is pretty wonderful on its own, it's the cost that's the icing on the cake. A set of pens, including Sakura's Graphic 1 pen and Brush pen, costs about $20 on Amazon. If you're not trying to go all out, you can stop by BLICK Art Materials or any art supply store and purchase an individual pen in whatever size meets your needs. Oh, and did I mention that they come in multiple colors?
If you need proof of the magic these pens can produce, a quick scroll through the #MicronPen hashtag on Instagram (or here, on their website!) will give you an idea of their capabilities:
Get on the right side of pen history, people.
