hey wow an ergonomic pen that actually looks good

ENTER THE TRIANGLE OF COMFORT

Hello! I am back and not dead; I just went to Italy. The weird-pen-related part of my trip was good: only one pen shop guy laughed at me so it was a great success.¹

I picked up this pen in Florence:

This is the Pineider Tempi Moderni. It is made of a light-eating void, which is why the pen looks so dark in this picture. It is not because I took a bad picture.

The Tempi Moderni is an “ergonomic” pen and it is notable because it feels good AND does not look like I stole it from a hospital’s physical therapy room. Usually you only get one of those things.

That is, you can have something like this:

An pen that looks cool but has a tiny little “ergonomic” triangle grip so you have to curl your weird long fingers until your hand resembles a claw from an arcade machine.²

Or you can have something like this:

An actual ergonomic pen that lets your hand relax, but which looks like something you had to use GoodRx to buy.

This has presented a problem for me, because years of lawyering and then design work have not been great on my hands. I now have to use one of those goofy vertical keyboards for any serious typing.³

my actual keyboard

The good news is that I can use a regular pen just fine; unlike typing, writing allows my wrists be in a neutral position and that’s my big issue. But I’m much more aware of what repetitive stress can do these days—and hopefully being kinder to my hands will mean I don’t have to relegate my fancy little pens to display items in my later years because I have to use an adaptive-grip pen that looks like a turkey wishbone.

At the same time, my vanity and desperate clinging to youth sense of personal style dictates that the things I use should not look like medical devices, even when they are obviously that. This, for example, is my cane:

no surgery just spooky

I am happy to report that the Pineider Tempi Moderni successfully threads this needle: it has a big fat triangle grip that lets your hand relax AND it looks like an actual pen.

The Tempi Moderni is a piston filler that you fill by turning this tiny little knob on the back. It’s one of the fancier piston fillers, the kind where the knob stays flush to the body when you use it.

The cap has a magnetic closure.

And it’s a weird triangle shape.

I believe this is supposed to be inspired by aircraft fuselages. It reminds me of those El Bubble candy cigars.

from here

But whatever, let’s get to the important stuff—the massive triangular grip:

Yes. Amazing. Even bigger from behind:

Yes! This is how you do an ergonomic triangular grip. Take notes, everyone else—don’t just take a regular grip and carve out some facets. BE COMICALLY LARGE OR BE NOTHING.

Anyway: I’ve been using this for a bit now and really like it. It reminds me of the Krusac Dragonslayer in that it’s unusually comfortable to use once you adjust to keeping your hand a little more open, or a lot more open in case of the Tempi Moderni. The grip on this thing is so big that you can basically just lay it on your hand and write with your arm and shoulder while your hand goes to Margaritaville.

That said, there are drawbacks:

• it’s a single-color resin pen with a gloss finish, so instead of Tempi Moderni it could have been named Scratch City USA (Population: Pocket Lint)

• zero skulls or dragons

• section could be longer—to really relax my hand I want to hold it without curling my thumb, but I run into the step-down if I do that (compare it to the Safari, which has a much longer section with basically no step-down)

• cap feels wiggly; could have been solved by a longer section or stronger magnets (although they feel fairly strong, so I think it’s the section length). It’s probably fine but I’m always afraid to pick it up by the cap

In sum: are you are looking for an ergonomic, lightweight pen that feels comfortable to use for a long period of time and still looks like a regular pen? Do you have a deeply-held belief that dragons are not work-appropriate? Is this one is on sale? Then this is the pen for you.

Otherwise get the Dragonslayer, which is equally comfortable and has a dragon.

You can buy the Pineider Tempi Moderni at You Figure It Out, You’re On A Computer Already—and don’t forget to put my discount code HEYJEREMY in the order notes for some exclusive Extra Fine Writing swag!⁴

1. i asked if he had a visconti iopenna so he responded appropriately; this was also better than him responding with a blank stare as i didn’t know how to follow up with “you know, the weird floppy fish one with a creepy face on the cap” in italian

2. i have repeatedly done research into how to 3D-print a regular grip for the Safari, but then i remember that not being able to use the Safari’s grip means i save a lot of money on not accumulating Safaris regardless of how cool the colors are and then Castle comes on TV and then I work on a puzzle instead

3. on the bright side, this has saved me from getting in on the pen-adjacent mechanical keyboard/keycap hobby and that means my pen hobby is basically free

4. the swag is making a friend named jeremy who works in online order fulfillment