Three Pens and the Invisible Architecture of Policy

Design is not what you see. It is what survives regulation. The three pens from Staedtler, Faber-Castell, and Kuretake ZIG appear simple, yet each represents a highly regulated system I helped lead as President of Global Product Development and Design, Innovation, and Sourcing for each brand.

Behind any writing pen is a complex chain of safety standards, compliance reviews, sourcing decisions, intellectual property approvals, and cross border regulatory hurdles. That same discipline applies to civic systems. Public programs, like products, only succeed when policy, regulation, operations, and human behavior are designed to work together.

I am fortunate to have retained an inventory of writing implements from past CPG projects, including three pens that have been in my collection for five to fifteen years and remain in excellent writing condition. I happened to have all three on my desk today and was struck by how well they continue to perform, a quiet testament to design that survives regulation.

These pens are a reminder that execution under constraint is not abstract. It is tangible, testable, and accountable.

Policy is written once. Implementation is written every day.