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Gold Award
The Shakespeare Bic
BIC
Brazil
2026
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Entrant Company
VML
Entry Type
Product/Service
Program
Clio Awards 2026
Medium Type
Professional
Medium
Print & Out of Home Craft
Category
Art Direction
To celebrate Bic Cristal’s 75th anniversary and its promise to write up to 3 kilometers, the brand set out to answer a simple question: what does 3 km of ink actually look like? The aim was to turn a dry product claim into something people could see, touch and feel during back‑to‑school season, when Bic is most present in students’ lives. The answer became “The Shakespeare Bic”: a complete, handwritten edition of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet created with a single Bic Cristal pen. Together with a calligrapher, a forensic expert and a tech designer, the team used AI to study and rebuild more than 22 traits of his handwriting, from letter shapes and proportions to inclination, spacing and ligatures. This “data of the hand” was then plugged into a custom robotic arm taught to write like Shakespeare. Over 20 days, it filled a 226‑page book with one Bic Cristal, with tiny programmed variations so the writing stayed organic and human. A classic rewriting a classic, the project turns an everyday pen into the instrument that brings a timeless story back to life.
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