Expo Dry Erase Markers

Produced by Sanford Brands, and based in Oak Brook, Illinois, this iconic marker has been smoothly squeaking and diagramming since the 1970’s. Lines carve out from the chiseled point of the Expo onto the inert sheen of the whiteboard, and an audience – round a boardroom table, or perched in swivel top airplane desks, or standing arm folded in a semi circle amid hulking machinery being diagramed and described – is taken by the poetic way that from once where nothingness stood, there was now a bold line of some color commanded by the demonstrator.

After much demonstration, a room might bear a hint of an Expo; a smell of something evocative of an ethylene compound, or acetone, and somehow extraordinarily familiar. Flowcharts have been discussed here. Several arrows tell of points to be had. A rudimentary and scrawled outline, perhaps. Maybe some hieroglyphics depicting a metaphoric insight. Zips and squiggles become demonstrative of thought itself, as ideas are taken from the abstract and put into very tangible representations on the whiteboard. The Expo Dry Erase Marker makes this happen.