Daniel Benneworth-Gray enters a brave new world of design

After being given a shove via strangers on the internet, our design correspondent embarks on designing via tablet and uncovers a host of delights

Illustration: Daniel Benneworth-Gray

Day one. Rectangular, black, featureless, save for a few subtle buttons and a touch-wheel thingy. Like the result of some dreadful union between iPod and Monolith. Along one side of this slab, a single word: Wacom.

I recently asked around if other designers were using graphic tablets for their work. A fairly innocuous question, I thought, but I was immediately met with a barrage of horrified responses: “You’re not using one already!?” Somehow, this apparently essential bit of kit has eluded me for years. 

At some point I found an agreeable software/hardware combination that worked for me, and at some unknown later point, I became set in my ways. But now some brusque strangers on the internet have shamed me into needing one, so here we are, and here it is.