Lewis Foster over at Thinking Sustainable recently worked on two projects involving Leonard Read’s classic, I, Pencil.
The first project is a short documentary with Milton Friedman explaining the principles of I, Pencil with clips that illustrate the complexity of a pencil:
The second project is a family tree of a pencil. From his website:
Inspired by Leonard Read’s essay I,Pencil I set out to illustrate the great complexity of a pencil, I managed to trace all the ingredients of a single pencil back to it’s raw ingredients. The pencil family tree stretches to over 4 metres long with a wide range of ingredients; from sulphur to sea salt and even to the cochineal beetle used for its red dye.
Check out more photos of the project.
