Italy’s Free University of Bolzano design students were asked by their professors Claudio Larcher, Alvise Mattozzi and Eugenia Morpurgo to reimagine ways to sharpen pencils, and as expected the interesting results ranged from cheeky to avant-garde.
Titled La Matita Rossa, the 21 pencil sharpener designs make us rethink our interaction with common objects. Here are some of our favorite sharpeners cooked up by the students, and be sure to head over to their website for the rest of the collection.
Susan Joy Guidi’s Snake Sharpener requires some twisting and turning from both ends of the pencil
A circle-shaped sharpener by Caterina Nebl, where you’d have to swirl the lead around the circle’s edges to sharpen it
Luca Mantenuto’s Finn Icky aims to “satisfy the most finicky users” with 5 ways to sharpen – and resharpen – that pencil tip… perfect for the obsessive-compulsive.
Faces, the geometric sharpener that can be worn as a necklace by Jessica Rosa, gets my vote…
Design-wise, the paper airplane-shaped sharpener by Lucrezia Faraci is simply lovely.
Plane by Maria Girofletti gets your muscles working with her design that mimics a carpenter’s planing tool
The kinkiest pencil sharpener of the lot is Ich bin spitz auf rich by Isabella Sebald, which transforms the pencil sharpening into foreplay, if that’s your thing…
This will probably ignite the interest of pyromaniacs out there: Barbara Rossaro’s Set Fire to the Pencil turns pencil sharpening into a fire ritual.
Also see how design students reinvented the pencil.