The launch of the STABILO BOSS highlighter at the beginning of 1971 marked an innovative masterstroke by Schwan-STABILO with a totally new, revolutionary application. In the days before fluorescent highlighters there were few ways to mark important text. The idea of simply writing over passages instead of underlining them was obvious: all that was left was for fluorescent ink to be put into a suitable pen. And a revolutionary writing instrument required an equally revolutionary shape – a real challenge for an industrial designer! The designer made one model after another, only to discard them all: square, round, short and fat, long and flat designs. A conical cylinder he had produced in modeling clay seemed like a promising idea, but it was still hardly anything new. In his frustration, the designer squashed the model lying in front of him with the flat of his hand…

40 years later, the flat, chubby highlighter still has many imitators. And to this day it remains the highlight of an entire product category.