Tag Archives: World Clock

Meet the minimalist world clock that lets you check the time around the world by rolling it

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We live in a world that gets a little bit smaller each day as advancements in transportation and communication connect us with anyone anywhere anytime. It isn’t unusual anymore to have family members living half a world from each other, or friends scattered across different countries. Unfortunately, that also means having to keep tabs on different timezones, lest you land in the awkward and embarrassing situation of calling someone at the wrong time. World clock apps have become a necessity for such people, but the information that they offer comes with complexity and inconvenience, especially when you have to dig through a handful of screens just to get the time you needed. You can have one clock for each timezone you’re interested in, but that can get messy really quickly. This minimalist one-handed analog clock, in contrast, offers a solution that is simple yet so clever that checking the time in other countries feels almost like a game instead of a chore.

Designer: Masafumi Ishikawa

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Even at first glance, you can already tell that the World Clock is not your typical desk or shelf clock. Never mind its unusual but not unheard of dodecagonal shape, the clock only has one hand on its minimalist face. The design is intentional, of course, because it gives you just the right information you need when you want to know what time it is in another part of the world. With a quick look, you’ll be able to immediately tell the hour, and a closer inspection could even tell you which quarter of the hour it is.

Of course, this isn’t an ordinary clock that just tells your time, as its name plainly indicates. Without complicated screens or complex mechanisms, the World Clock can easily clue you in on another timezone with a single and simple action. Simply roll the clock on its side until the city of the timezone you want is pointing straight up (a.k.a. the 12 o’clock position) and watch the single hand stay in place, “converting” the current time to the correct timezone. Actually, you don’t have to literally roll the clock on a surface for it to work. The internal bearings ensure that the hand remains in the right position, no matter which side is pointing up. It’s a simple yet ingenious way of converting time without actually doing the math for it.

Each of the 12 sides of the clock has markings for a city that represents a particular timezone, starting with London at UTC+0. Admittedly, you’ll have to remember places with their respective time zones, but putting a name to that time zone is a lot more familiar than memorizing numbers. Unfortunately, if the place you’re interested in falls outside of these 12, you might find yourself still doing some mental math in the end.

The World Clock’s simplicity applies to both its function as well as its design. It uses a simple movement mechanism no different from wall clocks, except for the addition of that bearing that keeps the hand in place when rotating the clock. The clock also has a certain charm familiar to lovers of minimalist designs, allowing it to blend in with its surroundings in a subtle yet pleasant way. More importantly, the manual method of turning the clock to check different timezones gives it a more intentional and personal aspect, creating a stronger connection between the act of checking the time and thinking about the loved one living in that timezone.

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The post Meet the minimalist world clock that lets you check the time around the world by rolling it first appeared on Yanko Design.

Kehai wall clock makes you look at the passage of time in a different light

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Being able to tell the time of day may have been critical to survival in ancient times, but our modern lifestyles have unsurprisingly put a different twist on that. More often than not, the ticking of the clock, literal or figurative, is a source of stress for some people, a glaring reminder of how little time they have left in the day or in their lives. Minimalist clocks have tried to change our attitude towards time by changing the way we look at clocks themselves. This wall clock continues that tradition by applying a good measure of Japanese minimalist aesthetic to create a timepiece that tries to make you feel more detached from the burden of keeping time.

Designer: Makoto Koizumi

It starts with the very shape of the clock, a simple and familiar circle. The custom aluminum frame is made in Japan using a casting technique to create a thin yet durable container for the wall clock. Available in white, yellow, and gray, the clock almost disappears into the wall if placed on a surface that nearly has the same hue. Without any extraneous marks inside or outside, the minimalist appearance of the clock’s frame tries to avoid inducing stress whenever you look at it.

The clock’s hour and minute hands are not only plain, but they’re also literally flat and look almost broken. The two together almost give the clock a skewed face, as if the hands were floating in some murky soup of time and space. The frosted glass on top adds to the obscurity of the hands and the clock in general as if making it harder to read the time. Its ambiguous design, as the designer called it, tries to make us rethink our sometimes unpleasant view of time and the clocks that represent them.

In contrast to the rest of the clock, however, the second “hand” easily stands out and calls attention to itself. It’s just a big red dot that looks almost like a zit on the clock’s otherwise pristine face. It is so unlike traditional seconds hands, not just in appearance but also in movement. Where most hands move either in staggered motions or sweep swiftly around, the size of the red circle means it travels smoothly and more slowly as it circumnavigates the clock’s edge. In some sense, it removes the tension when watching the Kehai clock, unlike the gripping suspense of watching the second hand hit 12 as seen on TV.

Kehai is a simple and beautiful interpretation of a clock that is both Zen and playful at the same time. In a way, it almost represents that same ambiguity we have towards clocks and time itself. The murky glass is seemingly creating a barrier between us and the clock, while the red dot tries to remind us that every second counts. Time passes at the same rate, whether we rush or not, and this clock tries to blur our skewed perception of it while also giving any wall and any room a unique character.

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Genius World Clock uses a Golden Spiral to show the time in every single time zone simultaneously

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The entire world’s time, on one single dial…

If you really want to see designers be divided over an issue, don’t ask them what they think of the Cybertruck, or whether they’re Mac or Windows lovers, or if they think Comic Sans is a ‘good font’. Just ask them what their thoughts are on the Golden Spiral. Often regarded as either one of nature’s most powerful tools, or an elaborate hoax, the Golden Spiral is often used to justify the greatness of any design. Whether you believe that a spiral can instantly make a product look better designed is a different topic altogether, but you can find the spiral everywhere, from being superimposed on the Parthenon in textbooks, to being used to obscurely show how the Apple Logo is ‘visually perfect’.

The efficacy of the spiral in determining aesthetics may be debatable, however, a designer has figured out a place where the spiral actually works. Designed by UGLY.DUCKLING ID (yes, the name’s pretty ironic), Bent Hands is a world clock that shows the time in every conceivable time zone by just using a single golden spiral that rotates around the face of the clock. I’ll admit, it took me a second to really understand and appreciate how the Bent Hands really works, but after staring at the clock and occasionally googling time zones, it pleases me to say that the Bent Hands clock quite simply works! The clock’s face is split into different time-zone rings, and the rotating golden spiral hand comes with a faceted design that has dots on every vertex. Plot the dot’s location and you’ll get the time in its respective time zone. Clever, no?!

Designer: UGLY.DUCKLING ID

Understanding how the Bent Hands clock works is a little tricky at first, but once you see the image below, you’ll get the hang of it. The different time zones are superimposed over one another to find a common ground. For UGLY.DUCKLING ID, this common ground took the shape of a golden spiral that rotates around the clock, taking 12 hours per round. The way the clock works is simple. The time zones are divided broadly into two categories, covering the AM and PM halves of the world respectively. Each concentric ring on the clock has two time zones written on them, one on the top, and another on the bottom. Simply put, every individual ring shows two times – the AM and PM halves respectively. For example, Helsinki and Hawaii share the same concentric ring on the clock, which means if it’s midnight in Helsinki, it’s noon in Hawaii.

However, there’s one major caveat to how this clock works, and I’m sure you’ve guessed it by now – Daylight Saving. Given that certain countries in the world shift their clocks back and forth by one hour all year, it instantly makes the Bent Hands clock unreliable in a way that is just a natural design flaw that can’t really be fixed. With normal clocks, you’d just set them back or forward, but given the interconnected nature of the Bent Hands world clock, a small change results in inaccuracies all across the board. However, it’s still an incredibly interesting concept, to begin with… and the day the entire world decides to unanimously reject daylight saving, the Bent Hands clock will make for a nice addition to most airports, hotels, and offices!

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Just rotate this unbelievably simple world-clock and it shifts time zones!

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This Lexus Design Award winning clock goes to show that sometimes the solution to a problem can be just oh-so-simple. Ditching the idea that you need to have multiple clocks to tell the time in different time zones, Masafumi Ishikawa’s World Clock is just ridiculously simple. The clock comes with a dodecagonal (12-sided) form, and just an hour hand. Each face of the dodecagon has the name of a famous city, corresponding to a time zone, on it. Just face the city’s name up and the hour hand tells you what time it is there (you’d probably have to use your common sense to tell if it’s am or pm). The only catch is that the World Clock doesn’t work with daylight-saving time, given that not all countries follow the practice of turning their clocks back and forth.

As the hour hand rotates on an axis, the world clock’s form was designed to be rotated and placed on a surface. Change what face it rests on, and the hour hand points somewhere else. Ishikawa uses this rather simple fact to turn a regular clock into a world clock! Give it a try, you can turn your table clocks into world clocks too!

Designer: Masafumi Ishikawa

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