When I was Obsessed with Fountain Pens

There was a time when I was obsessed with fountain pens. It’s a pretty interesting story how I came to them. Back when the COVID-19 pandemic just hit, I was taking a hand lettering class, and from that, I discovered that I really enjoy calligraphy. I was obsessed with calligraphy / hand lettering. I enjoyed it so much! I love doing calligraphy, and I also love the final end products of doing calligraphy: the typographic works of art. With this love of calligraphy, I picked up a set of some Pilot Parallel Pens. I then quickly became obsessed with those pens as well as calligraphy. The way the parallel pens write is just so smooth and seemingly effortless, which makes it so satisfying. With playing with the parallel pens, eventually, I learned that they are essentially fountain pens, but with a different type of nib (the two parallel plates of metal).

At first, I was interested in fountain pens purely for calligraphy purposes. Specifically, I was looking for fountain pens with flex nibs, so that thicks and thins could happen when using the pen, which is essential for calligraphy. What I found was Noodler’s Ink made some fountain pens that did have the flex nib I was looking for. Specifically, the fountain pen I got was their “Ahab” pen, because I was also looking for lots of ink capacity as well as a flex nib for calligraphy. I played around with this pen, toying with the thicks and the thins, and I was loving it. I love how smooth fountain pens write, since they require so little force to write; it’s just so nice.

Once I felt comfortable with the Noodler’s Ahab fountain pen, I then purchased a Noodler’s “Triple Tail” fountain pen, so named because it has three tines instead of the normal 2 for fountain pens. This extra middle tine allows for even more contrast between thicks and thins. I enjoyed playing around with this pen too. That made me realize that fountain pens aren’t just good for calligraphy, they write so well and so smooth, that just a “regular” fountain pen used “regularly / normally” like a pen would be really interesting as well. So I bought a fountain pen to use for just general use. I love writing with fountain pens so much, they’re so smooth.

Below, see a booklet I made and designed that discusses my love of the Pilot Parallel Pens and fountain pens in general, as well as discbound notebooks.