A new colour tip for Caran d'Ache Luminance 6901

Caran d'Ache has made a change to their Luminance 6901 range of coloured pencils which means it's very likely that I'm going to start investing in more colours.

This new brand of lightfast coloured pencil has previously irritated because there were two ways of identifying the colour of the pencil - neither of which worked too well

• the pencil was introduced with a colour chip painted on the very end of the pencil - it's too small and you can't see it at all when the pencil is lying down
• the colour name and number is written round the end of the barrel in light lettering on a wood background which doesn't give great definition and consequently is very difficult to read

Basically these are two design flaws which are pretty big in terms of the functionality of choosing which pencil to use next!

I really love the pencils and their pigment rich coverage with lightfastness guaranteed - but they were frustrating to use. In practical terms I was always having to inspect a Luminance pencil prior to using it - and that just became irritating.

However I guess a lot of people must have complained or fed back to Caran d'Ache saying that they weren't too ecstatic about the arrangements for identifying colours, because the company has now changed the pencils!

The Luminance pencils now have a new colour cap on the end. It's not as big as the colour on the Lyra Rembrandt pencil but it's a start in the right direction. I'd personally have liked to see it a tad bigger but this is a LOT better than the previous arrangements for colour identification. The change will make it much easier to see what colour the pencil is when you go to pick it up.
just

Now if we could persuade Caran d'Ache to name the pencils along the barrel of the pencil I'd have a pretty big smile on my face!

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