A century of ink came first.

Sharpie is the marker brand of a company that began with ink. The brand’s own history page, as archived in 2019, says Frederick W. Redington and William H. Sanford, Jr. founded the Sanford Manufacturing Company in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1857, and that it produced and sold ink and glue. English Wikipedia’s article on the company, now called Newell Custom Writing Instruments, gives the same founders and year.

The business soon moved west. The Sharpie history says the company expanded and relocated to Chicago in 1866, narrowly escaped the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, lost its original factory to another fire in 1899, and had rebuilt its headquarters in downtown Chicago by 1900. For its 70th birthday in 1927, the company says, it commissioned Norman Rockwell to paint a picture for advertising, which ran in magazines with a caption about a will written in Sanford’s Ink. The company says it changed its name to the Sanford Ink Company in 1940, and Wikipedia says that in 1947 it moved to Bellwood, Illinois, to make room for a new expressway, and still keeps a facility there.

The marker arrived in 1964. The company says Sanford turned its focus to the emerging marker business that year and introduced the Sharpie Fine Point black marker, which it says wrote on almost any surface, from glass, wood and stone to plastic, metal and paper. Wikipedia likewise says the Sharpie was launched in 1964 by the Sanford Ink Company. According to the company, the NBC talk-show hosts Johnny Carson and Jack Paar were among its early celebrity endorsers. In 1979, the company says, a new tip followed: the Sharpie Extra Fine Point, introduced in four colours.

Autographs, sport and a louder voice.

Much of Sharpie’s public image was built around the signature. The company’s history says the markers became more popular in the 1990s partly through sports memorabilia, with autograph seekers and celebrities using them on posters, trading cards, balls and jerseys. It says the brand moved into sports marketing by sponsoring PGA golfers including Arnold Palmer and Gary Player, and it recalls an end-zone celebration in 2001 by the American football player Terrell Owens in which a Sharpie played the central part.

Motor racing followed. The company says Sharpie became title sponsor of NASCAR’s Sharpie 500 in 2002 and also sponsored the driver Kurt Busch; English Wikipedia dates the Sharpie 500 sponsorship at Bristol Motor Speedway from 2001 through 2009, and says that for 2010 the race sponsorship moved to Newell Rubbermaid’s Irwin Tools brand. Wikipedia also says Sharpie sponsored the Nationwide Series Sharpie Mini 300 from 2004 to 2008. For the marker’s 40th year, the company says, it teamed up with Busch to rename Shelbyville, Tennessee, which it calls the home of Sharpie, “Sharpieville USA” for a day in March.

The product range widened at the same time. The company says five new Sharpie markers debuted between 1997 and 2002, and that six new product lines and twelve more colours followed between 2002 and 2005. Wikipedia says that in 2005 the company’s Accent highlighters were repositioned under the Sharpie name and the Sharpie Mini, a smaller marker with a clip, was launched, and that 2006 brought markers with button-activated retractable tips and Sharpie Paint markers. Wikipedia now describes Sharpie as a brand that spans highlighters, gel pens, rollerball pens and acrylic paint markers as well as permanent markers.

The advertising voice grew louder too. Wikipedia says Sharpie commercials used the slogan “Write Out Loud”, showing people using the markers in awkward situations, and the brand’s 2019 history page called it “The Bold Original”.

Design and documentation.

Marker brands work in a narrow visual space. The product is a tube, a cap and a tip, so much of the identity sits on surfaces only a few centimetres wide: the barrel print, the cap colour and the pack that holds a set together. Cap and barrel colours usually signal the ink inside, which means the product itself doubles as a colour chart, and the brand mark has to sit alongside that chart without fighting it.

Packs carry the rest of the work. A set is often shown fanned out in a window or on a printed card, letting the range of colours act as the main image, while a wordmark, a tip type and an ink type are named in a few short lines. Brands aimed at classrooms and children tend towards rounded type and bright primaries; office and studio lines tend towards plainer sans serifs and a single strong house colour.

Naming is a design tool too. Colour names, scent names, themed sets and tip descriptions all add a layer of language that the logo alone cannot carry, and a well-chosen name can make a single colour memorable long after the pack is gone.

From Sanford to Newell Brands.

Ownership changed once Sanford had become a public company. English Wikipedia says Sanford went public in August 1985 and was acquired by the Newell Company on 14 February 1992; the Wikipedia article on Newell Brands also dates the purchase of Sanford, with the Sharpie and Expo brands, to 1992, while the Sharpie article gives 1990. Newell has owned Sanford since 1992. Sanford had launched the Expo dry-erase marker in 1976, according to Wikipedia, so Sharpie arrived at Newell with a sibling marker brand already in place.

Newell itself changed shape twice afterwards. Wikipedia says the company acquired Rubbermaid in 1999 and renamed itself Newell Rubbermaid, and that in 2000 Gillette sold its writing-instruments division to Newell Rubbermaid, whose stationery arm became Sanford, L.P. On 14 December 2015 Newell Rubbermaid announced a deal to acquire Jarden, and Wikipedia says the combined company would be known as Newell Brands. Wikipedia says Newell Brands moved its headquarters to Hoboken, New Jersey, in 2016 and returned to Atlanta three years later. Its writing brands include Sharpie, Paper Mate, Expo, Mr. Sketch, Parker and Prismacolor.

On manufacturing, Wikipedia says Sharpie markers are made in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico, and in Maryville, Tennessee, as well as by partners elsewhere. The marker has also travelled further than most: Wikipedia quotes the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who commanded the International Space Station in 2012–2013, saying of the Sharpie that “you can hold it any which way and it still works”.

For a design guide, Sharpie shows how a single product name can grow into an umbrella brand: a marker named for its point now covers highlighters, pens and paint markers, held together by a bold name and a voice built around signatures. Compare a Newell stablemate in our EXPO brand guidelines and another Newell art brand in our Prismacolor brand guidelines. For this guide we use marker black, signal red and ink blue with a heavy grotesque sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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