Grey Lead Pencils From Around The World

This image collects together a range of grey lead pencil designs which are also individually available for use as icons or other graphic assets upon request. They natively exist as vector graphics and were created in Affinity Publisher.

This was an experiment in responsive icon design. The icons are identical whether the background is light or dark, but via the use of partial transparency, the icons can have a white glow that is only observable when there are darker backgrounds, increasing the contrast when needed. Before Trajecient did this, such an element in icon design had not been observed elsewhere.

In general, grey lead pencils were generally unpainted until more recent times, when this helped to market and differentiate the pencils in a different way, instead of relying on the quality of the wood. Of note is that the attachment of erasers to pencils is more strongly associated with Anglophile nations. Elsewhere, pencils without attached erasers are more common.

The different designs mostly have to do with differences in what brands dominate in which parts of the world, but it also reflects a cycle of reinforcement. Multiple companies have used similar colour schemes to the dominant colour schemes of a particular country as this had helped to either meet market expectations for how a pencil should look, or as a marker of local manufacturer to help boost domestic sales.