Carbon fiber - a material that closely linked to sport cars, spacecrafts, and futuristic technology - is still relatively foreign to most of our day to day tools and instruments. However, what kind of writing instruments could we make of it?

This is not a brand new idea in any ways, shapes, or forms, yet previous designs from popular brands have just been limited to making the carbon fiber into an overlay or decorative touch - but to utilize the hardness and durability of the material and incorporate that into the design of the writing instrument, there is this one brand that has come to my mind: Venvstas. They are definitely on to something potential, even though there is a long way to go to perfection, but their Magna CC model really caught my attention.

Disclaimer: The Magna CC used in this review is provided to me by the kind people from Venvstas, however I do not receive monetary commission or compensation for this review. All opinions are my own.

The word Venvstas comes from the old Latin Venustas - as quoted in the brand’s design philosophy:

When defining something "beautiful" we refer to the characteristics of Venus, the goddess of beauty in Roman mythology.

In the first century before our era, the roman architect Vitruvius  wrote a treaty on architecture entitled De architectura.

That work has been enormously influential, especially during the Renaissance when it was rediscovered. In it he described the qualities a building should have, such as: Firmitas (Lat. Firmitas)- a building has to be solid, Vtilitas (Lat. Utilitas)- a building has to serve to a purpose, and finally, Venvstas (Lat. Venustas) - a building has to be beautiful.

At Venvstas we believe that the same principles can be applied to any project scale, therefore we have set our minds and souls into creating unique designs that will strive to honor all vitruvian principles at the same time.

The cap, section, and barrel are friction fitted to one another with some metal parts and I could imagine them grinding off each other and make everything a bit loosen over prolonged period of use. A dot of silicon grease might fix the grinding noise a bit but this is only a temporary fix, and I’d have to see how the pen is going to hold up in the future. Looking at the images prior to me handling the pen for the first time, I was assuming an instrument with this design would have had some sort of satisfying clicky mechanisms or a magnetic cap to further emphasizing the futuristic design.

The 3 parts of the pens are cut diagonally so that when users assemble the pens together, everything is put back in the correct position. This is a brilliant idea because the design eliminated the “not so beautiful elements” such as threads and hooks, which are pretty much impossible to machined on carbon fiber. There is also a split at the end of the barrel to cap the pen, and the overall weight distribution is really well balanced in the hand for its length either capped or uncapped.

So far the impression I’ve had with this pen has been “tubular”: rounded cap, rounded barrel, a tube-like design, so the nib should be a circly roundly thingy too, right?

The included titanium nib is quite similar to your usual Bock/Jowo no.6 size nib. It writes beautifully with little line variations, yet it still feels a bit out of place… From the manufacturing point of view, making a pen base on an already existing nib is easier than to make a nib unit base on a pen design, and I can see why Venvstas chose the former. The standard nibs with a Schmidt converter is more familiar to users across the world, while also being easier to maintain and service. However, the heart of the pen should feel a bit more inline with the direction of the design and who knows, Venvstas would actually release a  limited edition with a somewhat conical or tubular nib such as the vintage Sheaffers’ or a modern take of the conical nibs from Visconti?

Overall the Venvstas Magna CC was created under the intention of combining both beauty and purpose into a design that actually works. It is an interesting concept and for those who loves the touch of real carbon fiber and the idea of turning the material into a writing instrument, this one is a must get. Even when there are still things that the team at Venvstas could improve upon what they have accomplished, so I’m eager to see what kind of projects they’ll undertake in the future. Thanks again to Fillipo for kindly sending me this unique writing experience, and I’ll see you guys in the next one!