Picking The Right Pen For The Job

So the pages of The Artful Planner are a little bit slippery to touch and the colours are very strong, some of you who have bought the planner was struggling with what pens to write with in your planner.

So we did a quick assessment of 12 pens with differing nibs to hopefully find the one that will best do the job. In our last Artful Planner video, I used a regular ball point pen, with very little issue but I would love to find a better pen myself so your feedback helped to get that ball rolling.

All the pens I trialed were found in Ryman's Stationary Store, a shop that can be easily found on most High Streets across the UK.

Here we go...

The Rollerballs

• The Uniball Eye Micro worked well, very fine tip did not smudged, dried pretty instantly, but was a little light against all the colours.

• The Stabilo Bionic Medium was not consistent in it's performance, It tended to slide and skip on some of the pages. But the colour was relatively strong on the lighter coloured pages.

• Uniball Vision Elite did not perform well on the paper. it slid and skipped a lot and the colour strength was inconsistent from one page background to the next.

• The Pilot V5 Hi-Tecpoint also didn't perform very well, there was significant skipping.

THE FINE TIPS

• Unipin Fine line 0.2 is a similar tip type to above, the colour was stronger, with the same positive quick drying none smudging ink.

• Stabilo Sensor another fin tip pen like above, I would say this one was better than the above one. The ink again was fast drying, non-smudging with crisp strong colour against the background paper.

• The Staedtler Triplus Fineliner (dry safe) was the best out of these three fine tips. The colour was the strongest, the pen moved easily over the page.

THE BALL POINT PENS

• The Schneider Slider Edge XB worked better than I expected, it stood up well against the colour pages of the planner. did not slide or skip about.

The Schneider Slider Memo XB performed even better than its counterpart the colour was stronger and the print felt more substantial in its finished look.

Fountain Pens

(I only tested one of these).

• Bic Fountain Pen wasn't suitable, it did dry quickly, quicker than i expected and there was no smudging but it did skip and slid about upon the page.

Felt Tip Marker Pens

(Again I only tested one of these).

• Stabilo OHPen universal (M) Flowed beautifully, the colour was very strong against all the colours and it dried very quickly with no smudging. I could not find a finer tip in store but I would assume a finer tip felt tip pen would create even crisper lines.

Marker Pens

(Only one of this type was tested).

• The Stabilo OHPen universal (F) is the last of the list and the one I considered the best of the lot. It gave me strong colour against all the page backgrounds, it did not skip, did not smudge and was a fine enough to tip to give a crisp print. This pen does also come in even finer tips, super fine (S) I believe it is called.

So To Recap:

1. The BEST in my opinion was the Marker pen: Stabilo OHPen universal (F). The Felt Tip marker pen Stabilo OHPen universal (M) was close on the heels of the best.

2. The 2nd best were the Fine Tips, with the Staedtler Triplus Fineliner (dry safe) topping the lot.

3. The 3rd best would be the Ball Point pens, with the Schneider Slider Memo XB being the better of the two that were tested.

The remaining pens I would not consider to be suitable.

I hope this helps anyone wondering which pen would work best with the planner, If you do already own one of versions of The Artful Planner please feel free to share in the comments if you found any other good pens that work well with the planner.