Birmingham Pen Co. Inkvestigator, a New Ink Comparison Tool

[Carrau]

An email I received today from the guys at Birmingham Pen Co. Introduced me to their new ink comparison tool, the Inkvestigator.  As one of their fans, I’ve often found it difficult to decide between some of their inks that appear to be very close to one another.  This new tool helps with some of that decision making.  It is found at the bottom of the INKS pull down menu, and for the moment is only operational for their line of  “Crisp Inks,” although that is still a considerable number of inks.  
     You click on the ink you are interested in on the list, and its swatch appears below. Then you can add as many inks as you want to view together.  They appear as stacked tiles, which you can then drag and drop to move them around for comparisons.  You can lay part of one over another to fit them on the relatively small portion of the page allotted for viewing, and rearrange them however you please.  You may remove one or all the swatches with the provided buttons.  It’s a useful and welcome tool for their website, and will become even more functional when their complete line of inks can be viewed.  More good work from Birmingham. (No affiliation).

https://www.birminghampens.com/pages/inkvestigator

[Carrau]

If the moderators feel this belongs in Marketplace, please relocate the thread.

[AmandaW]

That's cool!

[Karmachanic]

I can only look.  They don't ship to the UK.

[sombrueil]

I wish they posted writing samples. Well, they do in a way but the very careful thin printing -- it might in fact be a font in the ink color -- isn't super helpful. The swatches are thin and cloudy, too. I've been both pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised by the inks I've gotten from them. Most often the unpleasant surprise is that the ink is unreadably light. 

Unfortunately they also have been changing their inks so often that even the few online reviews I can find are typically for inks they no longer make. 

They could do better. 

[Sailor Kenshin]

Copy that.  The drag and rotate hardly worked at all.  

 

I take it back...sorta....blame my stupidity in not immediately understanding the way to do it even though there's little by way of instruction.

[Carrau]

Once you realize the swatches are initially stacked, you simply use your finger or cursor to “unstack” them and move them wherever you like, or delete those you no longer wish to keep.

[ErrantSmudge]

I'm not sure how useful this tool is, given that all of the swabs and writing samples I have seen posted online of the current Birmingham inks show colors much, much different than those pictured on their website.