Good Made Better Made Portable
Daniel Keller of Good Made Better just launched a new Kickstarter today for his upcoming portable writing desk, the Writewell. I wasn’t contacted by Dan to tell you about this launch (I actually contacted him to let him know I was planning on posting something), and I haven’t had any hands-on time with the Writewell yet either, but I have something else from Good Made Better that has me confident enough to have backed the Writewell, and to be excited for Dan’s vision of portable writing accessories.
The Writewell isn’t the first portable item that Good Made Better has produced. Previously I’ve shown you a comparison of the original "Classic model Penwell as well as the Penwell Traveler, the latter of which was a previous KickStarter launch designed to be moved from desk to desk. In the middle of last year, while I was ordering some items from Dan, he told me that he had thrown something extra into my package. This extra turned out to be a prototype of the Penwell Traveller Clip that Dan launched late last year, but having it on hand during that Summer and Fall proved to be a game changer for me in finishing up my last couple of classes of Grad School.
The Penwell Traveller adheres to the Clip via the same micro-suction pads that it uses to adhere to different desks (although mine has been modified, which I’ll explain in a moment.) You can then sandwich a few pages or a cover of the notebook you are writing in into the clip in order to be magnetically held in place. I found this to be the perfect setup to keep a fountain pen on hand as I scribbled wildly in my notebook; taking notes during lectures or mapping out papers as they veered wildly toward their deadlines.
It’s a small thing, considering I could carry a notebook and fountain pen separately in my hands very easily, but it gave me a feeling of freedom that I could get up and move in the middle of a writing session, and not feel like i had to close things down in order to move and then start things back up. At the end of last Summer our family rented a beach house, and while I missed most of the beach time with my nose in a book, trying to hammer out two different paper is in the weekend that we spent there, having the Penwell Traveller on hand I was able to move between the various sitting areas in the house while writing, to keep my mind churning by changing my view and my perspective, and without having to cap my pen and close my book and put things down while moving, but rather literally picking up what I was working on and transporting it to the next area.
And that’s the same potential I see, only magnified, when I look at the new Writewell up on Kickstarter. between the Penwells, and options like the Bookweight, the Rollstop, and the Reader’s Kit, this looks like a desk that you can pick up and move with you in the middle of a task. The integrated Penwells are one the part I am most excited for here, and for good reason. Earlier this year, I actually lost my Penwell Traveler at the Baltimore Pen Show. After keeping it adhered to the Clip all weekend, at some point it must have been knocked off while I was taking things in or out of my bag. When I went to purchase a replacement, I let Dan know of what had happened, in order to provide suggestions for future iterations and ways to better keep the Traveler and Clip together, but Dan already had the best suggestion. Dad offered to send my replacement traveler with a permanent adhesive pad, instead of the normal micro-suction. I can honestly say that ever since installing my replacement Traveller on the Clip, it has been even more sturdy than before. true, I can no longer swap it back between my desk and the Clip, but I have three other Penwells on my desk by now, so I’m fine with having the dedicated portable Penwell. Likewise with the Writewell, I am glad to see the pen holding solution integrated here. If two PenWells isn’t enough for you, you could always adhere additional PenWells to it, but at least for the first one or two pens, you know that it’s all one piece.
The Penwell Traveller and Clip are available for sale right now, and the Writewell, as previously mentioned, is currently on Kickstarter, and will hopefully be going on sale some time next year. As of time of posting, the campaign just went up earlier today with a goal of $5,000 and has already far surpassed that goal, coming in at over $11,000 raised, with still 30 days to go. There’s no question now that the project will fund, but if you want to be a part of it I still recommend that you sign up sooner rather than later because it is easy to forget about a Kickstarter campaign until after it ends.
The Penwell traveller above was purchased at retail pricing, and the Penwell Traveler Clip above was provided to us at no charge for the purpose of testing.
