Tombow turned a pencil brand into a lettering favourite.

Tombow is a lesson in a heritage maker staying culturally current. Tombow Pencil Co., Ltd. was founded in 1913 in Tokyo by Harunosuke Ogawa, and the name “Tombow” means dragonfly — an insect traditionally associated in Japan with agility, precision and good fortune (the dragonfly was registered as its pencil trademark in 1927). It is an independent, privately held company well over a hundred years old (we say “independent,” and hold the exact family-control claim loosely).

Its most famous icon is the MONO eraser (1969), instantly recognisable by its blue-white-black striped sleeve — a pattern so distinctive that Tombow registered it in 2017 as one of Japan’s first colour-only trademarks. ⚠️ A useful clarification: MONO is a premium sub-brand, not the company name — it also covers the MONO 100 pencils and MONO correction tape (tape, not a fluid pen). The company began, and remains, a serious pencil maker, the MONO 100 a benchmark drawing pencil.

What made Tombow a household name far beyond Japan, though, is the Dual Brush Pen (ABT) — a double-ended pen with a flexible brush tip and a fine tip, water-based and blendable, that became a staple of the Western hand-lettering and brush-lettering community — alongside the single-tip Fudenosuke brush pen for beginners. A heritage pencil house found a second life as the tool of a modern creative movement. (Honest notes: the dragonfly symbolism is cultural association, not corporate doctrine; production is split between Japan and Southeast Asia (Vietnam since 2003); and no official brand hex is published.)

Tombow lives in a dragonfly-green-and-MONO palette. Click a swatch to copy the hex.

Tombow’s identity is fresh, precise and playful — a dragonfly green, the MONO blue, and ink black. The palette reads as the brand: the green of the dragonfly namesake and the blue-white-black of the MONO stripe, clean and confident. It’s a friendly, capable world that signals craft, colour and everyday creativity. It’s a green-and-MONO-stripe palette that signals a modern Japanese stationery house. The honest caveat: Tombow publishes no official brand hex, so the green, blue and black here are an original, unofficial interpretation, not first-party values.

The lesson is a green-and-stripe palette signals fresh, precise craft. Tombow’s world reads as clean and creative. For designers, it’s a reminder that a fresh accent (green) paired with a strong graphic motif (the tri-colour stripe) can feel both dependable and fun. The takeaways: pair a fresh accent with a signature graphic mark; let one motif (the MONO stripe) carry recognition; and treat any single hex as unofficial when there’s no published spec.

The wordmark spirit is a clean Japanese sans — precise and friendly.

Tombow’s identity carries a clean, precise, friendly spirit — a “Tombow” wordmark whose tidy forms match a century-old maker of pencils, erasers and lettering pens. A clean Japanese sans captures the mood: it’s neat and approachable, matching a brand equally at home in a pencil case and a hand-lettering set. Set against a dragonfly-green palette, the clean sans feels capable and modern — exactly the MONO-eraser, Dual-Brush personality Tombow carries. It’s tidy rather than flashy, mirroring a well-made everyday tool. (Tombow’s real wordmark and dragonfly are trademarks we describe but don’t reproduce.) Because the exact marks aren’t ours to use, the honest description is “a clean Japanese sans spirit,” not the Tombow logo. The type behaves like the brand: precise, friendly and modern.

Tombow keeps finding new audiences.

Tombow is a lesson in keeping a heritage brand culturally relevant. A hundred-year-old pencil company could easily have become a nostalgia act; instead Tombow kept its icons alive (the MONO eraser is still the MONO eraser) while its Dual Brush Pen rode a modern wave — the global explosion of hand-lettering, bullet journaling and brush calligraphy — to reach a huge new audience that had never thought about a Japanese pencil maker. It did this without abandoning its identity: the dragonfly, the MONO stripe and the pencil heritage stayed constant, while the product range met people where a new creative culture actually was. The result is a brand that feels simultaneously old and current.

For designers and brand-builders, Tombow offers a clear takeaway: heritage and relevance aren’t opposites — you can keep your icons and still meet a new movement. The lessons: protect the recognisable marks (the MONO stripe, the dragonfly) so the brand stays itself; put real product where new creative cultures gather (lettering, journaling); and keep the facts precise — Tombow is a 1913 Tokyo pencil house whose MONO is a sub-brand, not the company. It’s also a reminder to keep it honest: the dragonfly meaning is cultural association; MONO correction is tape, not fluid; production spans Japan and Vietnam; and no official brand hex is published, so the palette here is an interpretation. Tombow keeps finding new audiences — proof that staying current can be the difference.

Keep Tombow’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.