A Hand-Drawn Interview With the Man Behind Adobe's Pen of the Future

Forget drawing on a tablet with your finger, now there's a pen for that. If you haven’t heard, Adobe, the software company responsible for some of the most important creative tools on the planet, is now making hardware. Specifically, Adobe has reinvented the pen.

Called the Mighty, the pen is like an Etch-A-Sketch for graphic designers, architects or anyone who wants to turn their iPad into a sketchbook. (Adobe will also offer a digital ruler, which is called the Napoleon, perhaps because it’s short.) The question I had is, if a digital pen is just trying to replicate the analog version, is it even necessary?

I figured the best way to find out was to do a jpeg interview, like I previously did Douglas Coupland. This time, Michael Gough, Adobe’s VP of experience design, is my penpal. We did an interview through a series of jpegs where I wrote with a regular pen and he replied using the Mighty. We chatted about love letters, preserving the art of handwriting, and drawing cows.

Adobe has yet to set a release date for the pen, but it's expected to launch later this year, and Gough said the pen-ruler combo will run $199.

MOTHERBOARD:

Michael Gough:

MOTHERBOARD:

Gough:

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MOTHERBOARD:

Gough:

MOTHERBOARD:

Gough:

MOTHERBOARD:

Gough:

MOTHERBOARD:

Gough:

MOTHERBOARD:

Gough: