I want to talk about something that is genuinely one of my favorite things we make, which is our 15mm Safety Marker in Caution Orange, and why I think it belongs in basically every truck, every utility closet, and every emergency management kit in America. That might sound like a big claim, but stick with me.

Here's the thing about signs. You always need one when you don't have one. You're in the middle of a job site and something changes, or there's a hazard that wasn't there yesterday, or the recycling guys need to know the lid has to stay closed, or there's construction happening right next to where people are walking, and you need to communicate that information fast and clearly and you need to do it yourself, right now, without waiting for someone to print something or order something or approve something. That is exactly the problem we built our Safety Marker to solve.

Who Is This Thing Actually For

Honestly, the list is longer than you'd think. We have plumbers using it. Auto industry folks. Pool cover installers, which is a niche I find genuinely delightful and I love when they call us. Tile and flooring installers. Trash and recycling crews. Anyone in utilitarian services of any kind. And it is a fluorescent Caution Orange, so it is not subtle, which is completely the point. You want people to see it. You want it to read from across a parking lot or a job site. That color exists for a reason and we leaned all the way into it.

We actually have three colors in the Safety Marker line: Caution Orange, White, and Laser Blue. And they each make a lot of sense when you think about them from a color psychology standpoint, which I cannot help doing because I have been thinking about color my entire career.

Orange means caution 

White is clean and readable on dark surfaces

Blue reads as medical, authoritative, trusted. So if you're outfitting a hospital construction team or a first aid station, Laser Blue has a totally different feeling than the orange, even though functionally they work exactly the same way.

Let Me Walk You Through How It Actually Works

So this is the part where I want to get a little practical with you because I get calls sometimes from people who say the marker isn't working and nine times out of ten it is a priming issue, not a marker issue. When you get one of these fresh out of the package:

Make sure to prime before you write with it:

• Press the nib down on your surface gently to let the ink flow into the tip, and then you're ready to go.
• You may also want to shake it before you use it, which sounds obvious but people forget. And the pumping motion is really just pressing the nib down to get the ink moving through. 

The 15mm tip is wide, which is exactly what makes it so useful for signage. You do not need good handwriting. I want to say that again because I think people sometimes hesitate when they think about making a sign by hand. You do not need good handwriting. The wide strokes of the 15mm tip make letters look bold and deliberate even when your hand isn't the most careful. You're going for legibility and impact, not calligraphy. And with that tip size, big block letters come together really fast. You can have a sign up in under five minutes, which is the whole point when you need something done right now.

The Cleanup Situation, or Lack Thereof

Here is one of the things I love about this particular marker and it gets overlooked: you don't always have to clean it up. We formulated the Safety Marker with what I think of as the wet-wipe formula, which means if you want to clean it off a surface, a wet wipe or a damp cloth takes it right off. Super easy, no drama. But if you're marking something outdoors and you just need it to communicate for a while and then go away on its own, a little bit of time and a little bit of rain will break it down. It weathers off. So you get to decide how permanent you want it to be based on your situation, which is a kind of flexibility that matters a lot in field conditions.

Why We Put This in Emergency Management Kits

This is something I feel pretty strongly about. Every emergency management kit really should have a few of these in there. And I know that sounds like a sales pitch but I mean it practically. When something unexpected happens on a site or in a facility, one of the immediate needs is communication. You need to mark a hazard. You need to direct people somewhere. You need to indicate what is safe and what isn't. And in that moment you want a marker that is bright, that makes a big clear mark, that anyone can use without training, and that doesn't require a printer or a computer or a pre-made sign to be anywhere nearby. That's this marker. It's economical, it's simple, and it works exactly when you need it to.

We've been doing this for a while now and the thing that never stops being true is that the best tool is the one that's already in your hand when the problem shows up. So anyway, we made a little video showing exactly how to prime it, how to pump it and shake it, and how to do the lettering with those nice wide strokes. It's pretty much all you need. And the rest of it you'll figure out in the field, same as everything else in the trades.

Alright, that's the Safety Marker. Still learning to blog, but at least I only reorganized my desk twice before I finished this one. Progress.