kaleidoscope – time in colour
With the display of time so ubiquitous today, the watch is less necessary for its time keeping function. A watch is really animated jewelry and a symbol of our taste, personality and status.
Three coloured gradients turn against each other to abstract time into an ever changing kaleidoscopic pattern.
The telling of real time becomes secondary to the engaging and decorative quality of the display.
Although possible to tell the time with the small dot and ring of the hours and minutes; we are interested to find out if users would learn to tell the time just from the pattern and arrangement of colours?
‘Kaleidoscope’ combines the reassurance of a known watch typology with a startling and provocative display of time.
bodyclock – up close and personal
Exploring intimacy, the ‘Bodyclock’ concept addresses the physical impact of wearing a watch.
In order to make the watch more seamless and streamlined, the buckle - a necessary but often annoying detail - has been moved from its normal position below the wrist, to be incorporated with the watch face.
The adjustment crown is unobtrusively hidden below the ring when the watch is worn, and the soft polymer strap is tailored to the owner’s exact size by cutting it to length.
The largest components are clustered towards the center, allowing the edges of the face and strap to be ultra-fine and an almost seamless extension to the body.
Rather than designing a thin watch as an end in itself, this concept incorporates thinness as one of the qualities necessary to make a watch feel more intimate.
wake-up – from wrist to night table
This concept explored the bedside context where we place both our watch and alarm clock. The ‘Wake-Up’ watch merges the two objects into one; extending its usefulness to 24 hours a day.
During the day it is a comfortable watch, emphasizing readability of the time and date.
During the night it is an alarm clock, with a visible but not overpowering display. The side button activates the alarm and inverses the display from day to night.
Inspired by wooden bracelets and elasticated children's toys, this simple solution allows the strap to stretch around the wrist and to pull it square on a night table.
timeline – the bigger picture
Inspired by a car odometer, the ‘Timeline’ Watch puts time into its bigger context.
It shows years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds in one long, lineal display.
Highlighting only the hours & minutes with colour, gives a ‘you are here’ reference to time.
Rather than the traditional division between time and date as separate entities, it represents them more naturally as one long unfolding sequence.
work & play – not always rush, rush, rush
This double-sided watch highlights two very different attitudes to time - work and play.
Work time; the world of work is pressured and serious, where minutes matter. The face uses a chronograph typology to highlight our obsession with the exactness of time.
Play time; play is unthinking and relaxed, where hours can pass. The numerals, minute and second hands have been removed to leave only a vague indication of time.
The design is symmetrical and can be worn with either face outwards depending on circumstance. This highlights the duality in our modern lives - a desire to do more in less time, with the need to slow down, reflect and relax.
showtime – time on demand
We are confronted with time everywhere we look today.
‘Showtime’ only politely reveals the time when you sweep the face with your fingers. It brings the Japanese concept of Teinei (meaning courteous) to the way watches present time.
The gesture is appropriated from lifting your sleeve to see the time.
When the face has been swept with a finger; the time appears as fine points of light, remains briefly, then fades back into the milky white face.
A flowing side profile and domed glass face invite touching and suggest the required gesture.
‘Showtime’ focuses on the way modern sensing technologies can provide a more subtle and poetic experience than its analogue counterparts.
This additional analogue version further enhances the theatre of revealing time. It uses a smart glass face to switch between opaque white and transparent. The concave face below completely surrounds the hands and makes them appear to float magically in space.
lifetime – a new culture of time
Imagine a watch that keeps its own time, oblivious to requirements for regularity or a need to be read.
This concept presents a provocative idea of time by replacing the mechanics of a watch with a growing organic culture.
Trapped in a sealed glass enclosure, a bacterium grows at its own pace and marks time by reproducing itself. Feeding on a culture, and warmed by its host, the speed it spreads is controlled by factors we cannot measure.
This concept takes the abstraction of a time-piece to its extreme. By removing any pretence of accuracy or regularity it enables us to look more holistically at time as the measurement of a life.
