With all the new phones and tablets, we might not use pen and paper that often anymore. But for many of us, a notepad, a good pen and a solid straight edge are always the way for designing, notes taking and analog illustrations. If you are sticking to the old fashion way to get things done, look no further, here is the tool for you.

Carrying a notepad, a pen and a ruler at the same time is little troublesome. You try to carry them, and they get misplaced. You try to put stuff in the notebook, and they fell out easily. But that’s no longer the case.

HMM RULE/ONE is a unique design solution combining pen and ruler, which can be easily and securely inserted into any notebook. With this beautifully and functionally crafted tool, wherever you can show your professional skills as a designer.

Design & function

RULE/ONE is 13cm long, a very compact size for storing purposes. Entire pen is made out of 5 pieces of milled Aluminum and few other parts. With this design, it's easy to be produced and eco friendly to environment. Aluminum is light but strong, which make it easy to carry around or even comfortably sitting in your jeans pocket.

You can also remove the head piece of the cap, and change into one with an detachable cord. It's stylish and you can carry it very easily. If you are a smart-device user, touch pen head is also available for you. By attaching the stylus head to the pen, you have one more tool on top of RULE/ONE.

THE MOST UPGRADE FEATURE!! We add NdFeB magnets inside the ruler, therefore the pen can slide back into it's original position.  It's a relatively hard feature to find the balance in between magnet and weight. Result is awesome that the magnet is powerful enough to slide the pen back, and easier enough to remove the pen.  

Manufacturing

We believe quality manufacture is a must.  Entire pen is made out of 5 pieces of milled aluminum, with black anodise surface.  These procedures makes the product lightweight but strong and durable at the same time. 

There are 2 surfaces markings to measure from, in both inch and cm. These markings and digits are made using laser engraving instead of printing, which ensure a long time usage. Furthermore, a thinner line provides you precise measurement.

The pen is a standard size interchangeable ball point pen with 3 different colours. If you ran out of ink or you want to change preferred colour, you can remove the cap from the bottom side of the pen by simply using a screw driver.  The one inside we use Mitsubishi UNI Ultra-fine 0.38, standard style ( more detail ).  Ballpoint refill brands you can use includes Pilot, Creamy, Lamy, Uni-ball, Signo, Pental, EnerGel and etc.  However we do suggest you to try them out before change.

Who we are and why should you support our RULE/ONE project

Making long story short, we are a group of designers who work in digital and advertising agency for years, always passionate about designer culture, photography, food and lifestyle. Couple year ago, we found ourselves complaining and having interest of making solutions for our problems, so that's why we started HMM by the spring of 2013. There are many product ideas we have in mind. We start with Rule/One for the reason that it’s the long due solution that we wanted for ourselves.

We began with drafting out many different shapes in 3D for couple months. After we decided on the final drop shape version, we took about another 3-4 months to create the models via different production shops and process, tuning our design and add-ons, finally get to where we are right now.

RULE/ONE is ready to go. If you could help us to reach the goal at the end of May, we can start production right after.  And be sure to check out our HERO BOARD.  These are the people who supported us!.

 Our Pledge Options

What if you like to have more then 2 RULE/ONEs?  No problem, you can simply find the pledge option you prefer, then manually increase your pledge amount by multiply the count, and we will send you multiple RULE/ONEs.  For example, if you like to have 4 pairs of RULE/ONE with hanger head (that's $50 option), simply increase your pledge amount by multiply 4, which is $200, then we will know that you are looking for 4 pairs of basic set with hanger.

Conclusion

One more thing about our manufacturing is that RULE/ONE will be Made in Taiwan; represents good quality manufacturing in relatively less cost. (Check on your Apple computer, that's MIT). We are Taiwanese and share the dream of supporting Taiwan manufacture industry. Although it's made overseas, our plan is transparent and clear. Here is our approximate process in 3 steps:

• Aluminium parts (mold components & mass production)
  by Wang Pai Precision Enterprise Co.
  end of June 2014
• Surface finish (laser and anodize)by CHIAN FENG INDUSTRIAL CO.,
  June 1-15
• Packaging and shipping(overseas shipping might take up longer & process)
  June 15- July 15

This is our little team discussing our project ( Nigel Liu and Michael Lee ). We also have team leader Qmore Chi and our North America partner Scott Chuang who live in San Francisco.