Design Translation · 2011
The arm stays still and the numbers come to it. A wall clock that tells time by an unusual movement.
The light stays. The numbers move.
The clock has a stationary light at the top of the circle and a rotating face with three dots between each hour. The gap between dots is 15 minutes, so the second dot after 2 at the light means 2:30.
Reads as
12 o'clock
Digital
12:00
This drawing follows the same rule as the object. It is not the clock itself, which has no readout beyond the dots.
Four choices behind the clock
A standard wall clock turns two arms clockwise over twelve fixed numbers. Read that way, the arms are the sun and the stars, and the numbers are fixed objects on Earth. That is the heliocentric picture, and it is a scientific fact. I designed the opposite: the numbers move to a stationary arm.
One light stays put. Everything else moves.
Reading "It is 5:36 pm" off a wall tells you too much. We usually say, "It is a quarter to 6." Many people already round the time when they share it, so I designed the clock to read that way.
Three dots between each hour, 15 minutes apart.
Too exact
5:36 pm
How people say it
Some wall clocks add a third arm for seconds. Doctors read seconds to check a patient’s heart rate. Running coaches read them for a runner’s time. On a wall clock, seconds seem like information pollution.
No seconds anywhere on the face.
I looked up and saw God’s design: clouds, stars, rain, snow, birds, all light in weight. So I designed the typeface to match. Black numbers on white, minimal, light, thin.
A typeface drawn for this face.
Made to be enjoyed, not consulted
Places where viewers relax and enjoy the clock, or expect to see exciting objects.
Viewers there care more about the time than about the clock design.
Seven layers and a motor
Behind the face sit a stepper motor, a microcontroller board with a motor shield, and an LED.
The clock running
Time doesn’t have to move the way we expect.
2011/12/09