A list of very thoughtful but also very unsolicited names for this Spoke Design pen

if you can name one of them, you can name this one too

Hello, reader!

Statistics tell me that you have likely come here from the Pen Addict, mnmlscholar, or an Italian pen forum. I am wagering that if you are coming from the latter two that you are probably at least aware of the Pen Addict, as I’m pretty sure Brad Dowdy runs the biggest stationery blog (end of sentence), and he has been kind enough to link here more than a couple of times (actual end of sentence).

He’s also one of the founders/owners of Spoke Design, a company that makes machined pens. This is normally not my thing, as my preferences tend to be for weirdo pens shaped like scepters and scorpions and whatever this is.

But: Spoke’s Icon model is a modular machined fountain pen, meaning you can make all the deranged colorways you want by asking them to make the grip, barrel, and inset different colors:

classy two-tone variations via Spoke Design

…and this is VERY MUCH my sort of thing. For example, here is what happens when I realize that my BENUs are more or less modular:

as they appeared in their corruptible mortal forms

BEHOLD THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT

Thus, it goes without saying that I have spent literal hours on the Spoke site trying to decide what would be the most bonkers color combination to buy, with my current frontrunner being a lime green barrel, purple inset, and bright orange grip. But every time I have it in my cart, I question whether I should get some other combination instead and choke—the paradox of choice.

But then, as I was adding various combinations to my cart again a week or two back, I saw that they had released this:

via Spoke Design

And I was immediately like “sold,” bought that one, and now we’re going to talk about that for the rest of the post.

This is the Spoke Roady, which is their pocket rollerball pen. It’s made of machined aluminum and, for this particular one, titanium (on the grip). And it is a Very Good pen, specifically a Very Good Pocket Pen, for several reasons.

First, the cap is magnetic, which nails two core use cases for a pocket pen: (1) writing stuff on the go and (2) MAGNETS.

via GIPHY

The magnetic cap is pretty strong and lets you play a fun game I call “try to put the cap back on without it making a CLICK sound because your wife is like ‘seriously please stop making that sound’ and she looks pretty annoyed.”

maybe be grateful GIFs do not have sound

Second, it fits easily in your pocket but can be used without posting. Sometimes I like screwing the back onto a too-small pocket pen, imagining that I am assembling a tiny Voltron, but other times I just need to quickly write down that I need apples from the grocery store before my dumb lizard brain forgets it—and for that, not having to post the cap to make the pen useful is pretty helpful.

pretty similar to a Kaweco Sport for me in terms of size and that I can use it with or without posting // also hi wife, sorry for borrowing your pen without asking

Third, the grip is knurled titanium and feels like a brand-new barbell, where the diamond knurling is still kind of sharp because it hasn’t yet been clogged up with the dead skin cells, sweat, and errant whey protein isolate of every goofball who has $10 for a gym membership. And if I’m using a pocket pen, that probably means I’m out and about and my hands will have the normal oil and detritus you get from being out in the world, so having a grippy grip is helpful.¹

And of course, it looks cool, which is obviously the real reason why I bought it,² but the rest of the stuff is nice too. The anodized lava color is actually kind of sparkly in person, though this doesn’t show up in pictures, and overall I’d say the pen is way sharper in person than in pictures.

Spoke has, however, left one major thing off of this specific configuration: a name. While some of the Roady color configurations have names (the ICEE, the Curacao), this one does not even though the product description recognizes it is an “outlier” that is “2x awesome.”

via Spoke Design

This should not be so.

And so, without further ado, here is a list of ten very thoughtful unsolicited names that I am offering to Spoke Design for consideration:

1. William of Orange

2. Hot Lava Check It And See

3. Helloween but not the band Helloween for trademark reasons

4. Orange Is The New Pen

5. The Monarch

6. The Pit Stop

7. Life Preserver

8. Pen Versus the Volcano

9. The Floor is Pen

10. Kevin

What’s your favorite? Comment down below.

You can buy Hot Lava Check It And See from the Spoke Design website, maybe; it has sold out twice since mine arrived (it sold out shortly after I ordered it, then I took the screenshots in a period where it was briefly back in stock), so good luck.

1. I do wonder if the knurling will wear down the finish on the inside of the cap from capping/uncapping the pen, but, like, meh, it’s the inside and if that happens then it’s because I’ve put in heavy use and it will hopefully create some cool designs on the inside.

2. See photos of BENU collection, supra.