This wood + brass ruler elevates stationery to a higher, more functional standard

Are you even a true designer if you don’t have a latent addiction to great stationery? If you don’t have 20 mechanical pencils that you bought ‘because you liked them’, and a Moleskine notebook you’ve never touched ‘because it looks too pretty’? If you identify as someone with those problems, look away, or rather don’t… because the Novus Rule is going to be your next favorite stationery item. Designed as a fine measuring and line-drawing instrument, the Novus Rule is a marriage between a brass ruler and a wooden handle, crafted to perfection in England. Made for precise measurements, a tactile grip, and minimal warping and parallax error, the Novus Rule is like the Mont Blanc of rulers (or scales, whichever word you prefer).

The Novus Rule is a product that prioritizes perfection and harmony over all else. It comes with a brass scale featuring a trapezoid cross-section, and a smaller, inverted trapezium wooden handle for grip. Sure, you’d wonder what makes the Novus Rule better than traditional rulers apart from its craftsmanship-appeal. Well, you see, the trapezium-shape of the brass ruler allows it to have much more tapered edges than a sheet-metal, plastic, or wooden scale. The Novus Rule exploits that, with an edge that’s as thin as 0.5mm, so your measurements practically touch the paper for better accuracy. The trapezium-shape even enhances readability, putting the numerics at an exact 28.8° angle that’s easier for you to see, and eliminates the warping that often happens when you apply pressure on regular flat metal rulers.

The handle on the Novus Rule gives it a perfect ergonomic grip, allowing you to hold onto and quickly re-position the stationery instrument without fumbling around and perhaps smudging and ruining your work in the process (like you would with any regular ruler). Made from wood, it feels comfortable to the touch, and sits in a machined channel within the brass ruler. This configuration give you the option of interchanging handles easily, depending on your mood or perhaps even project on hand. The Novus Rule boasts of an absolutely classic old-world charm… and it isn’t surprising that it was designed by a bespoke tailor who often worked with finely crafted instruments himself. With the Novus Rule, you can customize your ruler’s length and width while ordering it, and you can even choose the scale/units of measurement you want engraved into the metal ruler. To cap things off, Novus offers a choice between 4 types of wood for the ruler handle, from lighter Oak and Mahogany to darker Walnut and Ebonized Oak. If you can’t get over the Novus Rule’s beauty, functionality, and its old-world charm, head on down to order one for yourself! The preorder campaign ends on the 17th of April 2021.

Designer: Emmanuel Osei of Mundus TNA

Click Here to Buy Now: $325 $540 (40% off). Hurry, deal ends March 14th, 2021.

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The Novus Rule’s strikingly elegant design is not only beautiful with visual and tactile harmony, the warmth and intricate grain of the wood perfectly paired with the structural integrity and glow of brass but also a functional improvement, in terms of weight, pressure distribution and accuracy.

You can customize features like width, length, handles and the markings (or scale) on both sides of the rule to perfectly match the way you like to work. Individually crafted to fit seamlessly into your design process and inspire you to produce your very best.

The Difference

The Novus ruler trapezium angular design allows the edge to be graduated to 0.5mm, half the thickness of a standard flat ruler, providing better accuracy. Your marking instrument would be closer to the straight edge without the rulers own edge getting in the way or having to twist your wrist to re-angle. The edges are also slightly rounded at a subtle radius.

At exactly 28.8°, the sides have maximum visibility from all overhead angles, as well as having the handle provide protection from damage.

The Novus ruler’s unique design channels direction force/pressure down into the spine and redistributes it evenly back out along the base, coupled with a healthy weight, this ensures a stable and reliable straight edge all the time.

Sometimes a hassle lifting flat rulers. The Novus ruler incorporates a beautiful wooden handle ergonomically designed for easy grip and a unique accent, making no two pieces the same.

Wooden rulers bow over time no longer providing a straight edge. The Novus ruler has a solid brass base that is designed at a thickness to last many lifetimes.

Click Here to Buy Now: $325 $540 (40% off). Hurry, deal ends March 14th, 2021.

This minimalistic ruler was inspired by explorers for the explorer within you!

Seeking inspiration in our usual confined office spaces can be quite a task. The monotony and mundaneness of it can affect even the most creative minds. Hence inspired by the explorers of ages galore, and the monoculars used by them to peek at new lands, product designer Lukas Avenas created the ‘Creative Explorer’, in an attempt to liven up your workday. Multifunctional tools are always super fun, and here’s one that’s trying to mix up work with some play. Though it appears to be your everyday ruler, with a 1cm x 1cm extruded aluminum body, the ruler is also an undercover ‘kaleidoscope’. Take a sneak peek through it, and you’ll see that it provides a narrow and focused image of everything around you, while simultaneously reflecting the image multiple times to create intriguing and unexpected patterns! Boasting a clean white matte finish, the surface has been intricately designed with slight engravings, providing a fun texture and contrast to the ruler. Whereas on the inside, the glossy glass-like surface creates a kaleidoscopic effect by reflecting and replicating images consistently, bringing a sense of playfulness while you work.

Creative Explorer is a single long tube of metal, allowing you to seek ideas and inspiration through the kaleidoscope, and turning them into a reality using the handy ruler. Brainstorming doesn’t always have to be boring, it can be filled with trippy patterns and three-dimensional objects with a secret, such as the Creative Explorer!

Designer: Lukas Avenas

This roller-ruler is cooler than your regular ruler!

Titled the OO for the two circular discs at one end of the ruler, Snezana Jeremic’s piece of stationery is capable of measuring linear as well as non-linear surfaces, up to a stunning 99.9 centimeters! Using a clever gear system and two marked rolling-discs, the OO ruler can be rolled on surfaces, with a set of windows depicting the measurement based on how much the discs roll. The lower roller covers the millimeters, while the upper takes care of the centimeters, resetting every 100 centimeters, or one meter. Perfect for rolling down surfaces, the OO helps capture linear as well as non-linear measurements, while its straight-edge scale can be used as a conventional ruler too. Rather nifty, right? My only concern is needing to reset the roller-ruler to 0 every time you want to take a measurement from scratch!

Designer: Snezana Jeremic (Nemo)

Redesigning the ruler with a better user experience

When you use something all your life, you tend to take it for granted. You internalize its flaws and just live with them until someone designs something better that everyone then collectively embraces. Take the ruler or scale for instance. Its simple design is one of those rare instances where simple isn’t equal to good. Designed as a flat piece of wood/metal/plastic with equally space markings, rulers are great for measuring, but try lifting one off a flat surface and you’ll find yourself constantly pinching the instrument just to get a grip so you can lift it off the desk. Its flat design is also difficult to grip onto as you’re using it to draw lines. Sometimes the pencil slides onto the ruler, sometimes the pencil and ruler slide together, resulting in a crooked line running across your page.

Akhil Raj’s Pick ruler doesn’t have any of those problems. Punched out of sheet metal, the Pick Ruler is angular, so it doesn’t rest flat against any surface. It even comes with a semi-circular tab that’s easy to grip onto, helping you pick up the ruler or hold it down onto a surface with ease, while the angled plane on the Pick makes sure your pencil has a channel to move up and down in, without slipping. To up the Pick’s aesthetic appeal, it comes with a powder-coated finish, and instead of markings, has tiny visible perforations on it that’ll never accidentally get scratched or erased out!

Designer: Akhil Raj

Write and Measure in One

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Platform 150 is a designer’s wet dream! It cleverly combines a pen and ruler into one simplistic yet stylish unit so you can tackle the two most basic tasks at any time. Take a quick measurement, jot a note, determine a minute distance, or stencil a line in seconds simply by removing the pen or laying down the ruler section that’s built into the cap. Whether you’re an architect on the construction site or an industrial design student, it’s a minimalistic must-have you can throw in any backpack or briefcase.

Designer: Sanil Choi

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Intel’s push for petabyte SSDs requires a new kind of drive

There aren't many ways to make data center storage exciting, but mentioning a drive that could hold up to one petabyte (1,000 terabytes) comes close. Intel is making the case to swap out old disk-based drives in data centers with SSDs, and as part of...

De-clutter Your Desk the Designer Way

Let’s de-clutter your desk, shall we? A creative’s workplace is invariably a mess of papers, instruments, electronics, and wires that come with the electronics. Enter the RulerDock, a 3-in-1 tool from the award winning RCube Design Studio, created to work as an effective scale/ruler, as well as a charging and docking stand for your iPhone.

The RulerDock is all about triads. It comes available in three materials too, namely Concrete, and Dark or Light Pine-Wood. Its triangular shape makes it easy to move around (unlike those slim pesky scales that I just can’t seem to lift off my desk unless I use a fingernail). With measurement markings on both sides, the RulerDock can be used either way for measuring, and for drawing straight lines. A groove on one side allows you to maneuver your lightning charging cable inside the scale, having it appear at the top. You can either dock your iPhone vertically (this isn’t a problem, because since the iPhone is docked at 90°, it won’t tip over). The phone can even be docked horizontally on the channel beside the charging outlet. You can even place business cards in the channel instead, giving your workplace a much more professional avatar.

The RulerDock makes a rather handy desk-ruler, keeps your phone at arms length, and manages your cable so it doesn’t get in the way of other items strewn around your desk. Your workplace doesn’t stay as messy as before, and what’s more, you have a Red Dot and iF Design Award winning product on your desk!

Designer: Raft Wong of Rcube Design

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A Knife for Designers by A Designer

It’s sort of ironic how the precision knife is so commonly used by designers yet so lacking in design evolution. Who hasn’t lost the cap? Or had the knife go rolling across the table like a razor on the run?! Or lost your grip on the smooth metal? Well… designer Marion Lenne decided to do something about it and the result is PK.01 – a knife for designers by a designer!

It’s actually a knife and ruler combo and it combines surgical steel with natural cork. The tactile cork provides greater grip and is faceted to prevent rolling. Unlike a loose cap, the cork also slides down to protect the blade. It’s a simple integration that doesn’t look half bad either!

Designer: Marion Lenne

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