What's been done

Breathing new life into the brand by re-skinning their reliable, time-tested mechanical architectures.

Project Context

X-ACTO’s family of sharpeners have been a mainstay of classrooms across the world, with most of the designs now part of antiquity. The well-known X-ACTO classroom sharpeners are known for their rock-solid dependability, but their design represents artistic movements of decades past. This project re-shaped an icon of academia towards the new age of tech-focused education.

The Brief:

X-ACTO's use of a variety of suppliers left the brand void of a product design language. This made it easy for consumers to overlook the value of a well-built desktop electric sharpener, and choose one of the many competitor products in the category.

The industrial design team was tasked with developing and implementing a product geometry roadmap for
X-ACTO to convey what the brand wanted to be known for: strength, quality, and reliability.

Brand Characteristics

Collaborating with X-ACTO’s marketing team, we set to establish strong geometric characteristics that would set a thematic standard for their next generation product family. With these themes, we created 3 form paths to refine.

Representation across the Sharpener Range

The central, conical eye became the hallmark of the product family, as it jutted-out proudly from the flat face of each device. This established a memorable, and easily-identifiable target from across any room.