My yearbook staff is considering selling signing pens this year at our distribution event, and I, being the detail-oriented person I am, decided that we needed to figure out which pen will smudge the least and look the best in a yearbook.

In case you haven’t signed a yearbook in a while, the coated stock that’s used for yearbook pages is meant to make photos look great. However, it makes most inks smear. If you have the patience to let the ink dry, it’s no big deal. But for left-handed writers or middle- or high-school students (i.e., a yearbook’s target audience), that whole waiting part is not going to happen. Think about what it’s like when you buy the perfect greeting card, then as soon as you write your name, it smears right off, leaving a blue mess where your heartfelt message once was. Now, imagine if you paid $100 for that card. And held on to that card for, say, 50 years. You don’t want to see smudges. You want to read memories.

So a few of my fellow pen-obsessed yearbook staffers and I dug through our pencil cases and tried the pens we had on hand on a signature page in one of our old yearbooks. We wrote the name of the pen, the word “wait,” then “immediate.” I immediately ran my finger over “immediate” to see the smear situation lefties might run into. After waiting a few seconds, I ran my finger over the word “wait.”

One Pen to Rule Them All

As you can see, the clear winner is the Sharpie Ultra-Fine Point. In a previous test, the red Sharpie smudged more than the black did, but in this one, they fared equally well. Gel pens, the favorite among artistic or otherwise pen-aware students, were clear losers. Even the quick-drying InkJoy (my beloved InkJoy!) took too long to dry.

Also in a previous test, the Uniball was a clear second place, but it smudged more here. Maybe we waited longer in the first test. We tested the Pigma Micron, which is archival, previously, but it smeared too much to bother repeating the test here. The “blue pen” is probably a Jot pen, but the name has worn off and my Art Director is no longer certain.

Since we have had an increase in graffiti on campus, we’ll probably go with the Uniball. But it would be really cool to sell Sharpie Ultra Fines in our school color…