Tag Archives: clock

The Paper Clock That Hides Its Hands in Plain Sight

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Most clocks announce the time whether you asked or not. Digital displays blink at you in red or blue, counting down like they’ve got somewhere better to be. Even a classic analog face, the kind you’d find above a mantel or in a hotel lobby, still demands you stop and decode two hands sweeping past a dozen numbers. It’s efficient, sure, but it’s also a little relentless. Time gets shoved in your face instead of simply existing around you.

Mauricio Romano’s corrugated paper clock takes the opposite approach. There are no hands. No numbers. No glowing digits. Instead, a pleated disc of paper, folded like an oversized fan or a flower caught mid-bloom, hangs on the wall with a colored cord trailing down from its center. A hidden magnet inside nudges individual pleats open or closed to mark the hours, so the clock doesn’t tell you the time so much as it lets you notice it, if you’re paying attention.

Designer: Mauricio Romano

Romano first sketched this idea more than a decade ago as a design student, back when he was exploring his own synesthesia and how shapes could stand in for things that usually live in other senses. That early version, called the Geometry Clock, used triangles that shifted to represent numbers once you learned the logic. This corrugated version feels like the same instinct, matured. Instead of geometry you memorize, you get folds you feel. The mechanism is quieter, the material is warmer, and the whole object reads less like a gadget and more like a piece of kinetic sculpture that happens to keep honest time.

What actually gets me about this piece is the material choice. Corrugated paper is cheap, disposable, the stuff of shipping boxes and school projects. Romano folds it into something that looks closer to a paper lantern or an accordion caught in a gust of wind, then colors it in deep red, cobalt, teal, and a dusty terracotta that all photograph beautifully against a plain wall. It’s the kind of object that could sit in a design gallery just as easily as a living room, and it doesn’t apologize for being decorative first and functional second.

That ordering matters. A clock you have to study for a second before you understand what hour it is isn’t a clock built for glancing. It’s built for living with. You walk past it a dozen times a day and maybe don’t register the time at all, and then one afternoon you actually stop, trace the folds, and realize it’s later than you thought. That small delay, the beat between seeing the object and understanding what it’s telling you, is the whole point. It turns timekeeping into something closer to noticing the light change outside a window.

There’s an argument that this makes the clock less useful, and that argument isn’t wrong. Nobody is checking a corrugated paper sculpture to catch a train. But plenty of design right now is chasing that same tension between object and instrument, blurring the line until function becomes almost secondary to the experience of owning something beautiful. A speaker that looks like a piece of pottery. A lamp that looks like folded silk. This clock belongs to that same family, and it makes its case well.

As of now, Romano’s corrugated clock exists mostly on Instagram, shared in different colorways without a confirmed release date or price. It might stay a study piece, the kind of concept that circulates and inspires without ever hitting a shelf. I hope it doesn’t. A wall clock that refuses to shout, that asks you to slow down and read folded paper instead of glancing at a screen, feels like exactly the kind of quiet object worth having in a house full of louder things.

The post The Paper Clock That Hides Its Hands in Plain Sight first appeared on Yanko Design.

A Clock That Refuses to Just Tell You the Time

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I check the time roughly forty times a day, and I couldn’t tell you what any of those glances felt like. A phone screen lights up, a number flashes, and I move on before the information even registers. That’s the strange thing about how we live with time now: we have more ways than ever to know what hour it is, and less reason than ever to actually notice it. Digital displays don’t ask anything of us. They just report, and we absorb, and nothing about the moment sticks.

That’s the gap a new piece from Istanbul studio Omora Lusso seems built to close. Instead of showing the hour as flat information, it makes you wait for it, watch for it, and experience it as something closer to a small performance than a readout. The studio calls it Muvaqqit 60, and as the press materials put it, it’s a 60-centimetre kinetic time artwork that transforms the reading of time into a recurring physical ritual.

Designer: Omora Lusso

The name itself carries weight before the mechanism even moves. Muvaqqit takes its name from the historical timekeeper responsible for determining and regulating time through astronomy and exact observation, and in Ottoman cities, muvakkithanes were dedicated timekeeping rooms, often associated with mosque complexes, where prayer times were calculated and astronomical knowledge was practised. I appreciate that Omora Lusso didn’t try to costume this piece in false antiquity. The studio does not reproduce the instruments or forms of these spaces; instead, it reinterprets their culture of precision, contemplation and measured time through contemporary kinetic design. That distinction matters. It would have been easy, and a little lazy, to slap old astronomical symbols onto a modern object and call it heritage. This is a harder, more honest route: borrowing the spirit of a tradition rather than its skin.

The piece itself only reveals what it can do once a minute, and that restraint is the whole point. Once each minute, Muvaqqit performs a time-indication sequence: a comet-like progression of light moves through its layered scales as a mirror-silvered kinetic bird rises into position, while the hour, five-minute interval and minute increment are read across three curved scales, with an AM/PM display and an illuminated moon-phase arc completing the temporal composition. The rest of the time, it stays quiet on purpose. Between these moments, the work remains visually restrained, allowing anticipation to become part of the experience. There’s a kind of confidence in a product that chooses to stay dark and still for fifty-nine seconds just so the sixtieth means something. Most gadgets are terrified of silence. This one leans into it.

Omer Fatih Sevinctekin, the studio’s founder, frames the whole project as a question rather than a solution, which I found refreshing given how many product launches arrive dressed as answers. He describes it as beginning with the question of whether time can be experienced as a ritual rather than simply read as information, wanting the work to connect Istanbul’s culture of precise timekeeping with a contemporary language of motion, light and material.

Materially, the Noir Silver edition plays a straightforward but effective contrast game. It pairs a soft-black metal frame and anthracite inner dial with a hand-polished, mirror-silvered brass bird, presented behind a four-millimetre glass front, with a controlled palette designed to sharpen the contrast between stillness and movement, and between the dark architectural body and the brief illumination of the time ritual. Nothing about it is loud until the moment it needs to be.

This isn’t a mass object, and it was never going to be. Muvaqqit 60 Noir Silver is limited to 50 pieces worldwide, offered at USD 6,000, with each work produced in Istanbul and accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity, a dedicated wooden presentation case, art-handling gloves and operating materials. That price and scarcity will keep it out of most homes, and I won’t pretend otherwise. But the idea underneath it, that time deserves a moment of attention instead of a passing glance, doesn’t require owning the object to land. The studio’s broader collection treats time not as a static reading but as an event, a sequence that can be anticipated, observed and remembered, and that’s a quietly radical stance in a culture that mostly wants its information delivered instantly and forgotten just as fast.

The post A Clock That Refuses to Just Tell You the Time first appeared on Yanko Design.

Kids’ Tech Has a Screen Problem: This $139 Button Is the Fix

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Getting kids through morning and bedtime routines is one of those parenting problems that never quite gets solved. Apps on tablets and phones have tried, but the device that’s supposed to help with brushing teeth is the same one that can pull up YouTube. Most parents end up nagging anyway, just now with a screen involved. The category of kids’ tech hasn’t really made mornings easier. It’s made them busier.

Skylight Buddy takes a different approach. It’s a purpose-built bedside device for children ages 4 to 10, with a touchscreen, a speaker, a built-in nightlight, and a physical action button. What it doesn’t have is just as deliberate: no internet access, no browser, no downloadable apps, no camera, and no microphone. It launched in June 2026, and its first production run sold out within a week.

Designer: level Design

The core interaction is simple. Buddy guides kids through their morning, after-school, and bedtime tasks one at a time, showing each with clear on-screen visuals. When a task is done, the child presses the action button on top to confirm, advance to the next step, and collect stars. The design team pushed hard to keep that physical button rather than defaulting to a screen-only approach.

The button is yellow across all three colorways, which serves a functional purpose. It’s the brightest thing on the device, a deliberate visual signal that reads as “press me” from across the room. Buddy comes in blue, sage, and lavender, each with a soft silicone case that wasn’t designed as an accessory but as part of the form. With the case on, the side speaker sits flush with the body.

The integrated light handles two things that parents often buy as separate products: a nightlight for bedtime and an OK-to-wake signal for mornings, so younger kids know when it’s actually time to get up. Add a sound machine for winding down at night and an alarm clock for starting the day, and Buddy replaces a collection of single-purpose devices that typically end up crowding a child’s nightstand.

Buddy works as a standalone device right out of the box, covering routines, chores, the alarm clock, and all core features without any additional cost. Families who already use Skylight Calendar can link the two through the same parent app, syncing a child’s tasks and rewards automatically. A Buddy Plus subscription unlocks additional tools, including rewards tracking, visual timers, and nudges for transitions that are harder to manage.

At $139, it isn’t a cheap clock, but it’s also not competing with tablets or general-purpose screens. That’s the point. Kids can’t download apps on it, can’t open a browser, and can’t drift into videos once their tasks are done. For a category of products that’s gotten very good at capturing children’s attention for all the wrong reasons, Buddy’s restraint is its most compelling feature.

The post Kids’ Tech Has a Screen Problem: This $139 Button Is the Fix first appeared on Yanko Design.

Korean Studio JAYUJAJE Just Made the Strangest Clock

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Most clocks want to be noticed. They arrive with Roman numerals, exposed gears, or oversized frames, working hard to earn their place on the wall. The NMK by Seoul-based studio JAYUJAJE takes the opposite position entirely. It barely announces itself. And yet it is, without question, one of the most visually arresting objects I have seen recently.

The NMK is a concept. It does not exist in a store. You cannot buy it. And yet designer Jin Kim of Seoul-based studio JAYUJAJE has photographed it with such care, placed it with such intention against galvanized steel shelving and paper lanterns and stacked design books, that it already feels like a fixture of a room you very much want to live in.

Designer: JAYUJAJE

Start with the face, because that is where everything happens. It is a disc of tightly woven wire mesh, slightly concave, pulled into a shallow cone that draws the eye directly toward its center. The mesh is extraordinarily fine, the kind of density that creates its own optical behavior. At the outer rim it reads as pale silver, nearly transparent. Moving inward, the tone deepens gradually and consistently until the core becomes a near-black that feels less like a color and more like depth. The gradient is not printed or painted. It is a natural consequence of the curvature and mesh density interacting with light. The hands are two flat matte black bars, thin and unadorned, sitting flush against the face. No numbers. No markers. No hour dots. Just the slow movement of two lines across a surface that looks different depending on the angle you are standing at.

The center hub anchors everything. In the lighter version of the clock, it is a solid cylinder of blackened wood, its grain still faintly visible, sitting proud of the mesh face. In what appears to be a material study, the hub takes the form of a rougher, heavier truncated cone in dark stone or dense concrete, resting on a flat wooden disc that acts as a base. Both versions communicate the same thing: weight, presence, and a deliberate contrast between the industrial precision of the mesh and the warmth of a natural material at its core.

The concept draws from a specific philosophical tradition. Jin Kim has grounded the NMK in the worldview of Joseon-era scholars, who understood time not as a series of discrete and measurable units but as a continuous, gentle flow. That context changes how you look at the clock entirely. The absence of numbers is not minimalism for its own sake. It is a point of view. A clock face with nothing to count against refuses to let you fragment the day into anxious increments. The hands move, time passes, and the only reference point is the gradient itself, deepening toward the center like a slow exhale.

That philosophy is paired with a second intention: to record the structural aesthetics of Korean heritage within a contemporary interior. The wire mesh reads as industrial, but the concave disc form and the relationship between the circular face and the cylindrical hub echo the proportions and restraint of traditional Korean craft. The NMK does not announce its cultural references. It holds them quietly inside a form that looks, at first glance, like something from a design laboratory.

JAYUJAJE is the studio of Jin Kim, whose work consistently sits at the intersection of cultural memory and contemporary materiality. The Bugak stool, one of the studio’s earlier pieces, placed traditional Korean butterfly joinery at the structural center of an otherwise spare, modern object. The NMK continues that approach. The heritage is not decorative. It is load-bearing.

What makes a concept worth paying attention to is whether the idea is strong enough to survive the gap between intention and reality. The NMK clears that bar comfortably. The photographs show a physical object with real materials, real light behavior, and real presence in a room. The two-mode functionality, wall-hung or tabletop, works in both configurations without either feeling like a compromise.

Clocks are one of those design categories where the problem is already solved and everything else is a conversation. The NMK enters that conversation with something genuinely different to say: that time does not need to be counted, only felt. Whether it ever goes into production or remains a concept, it has already made its argument. Quietly, precisely, and without a single number on its face.

The post Korean Studio JAYUJAJE Just Made the Strangest Clock first appeared on Yanko Design.

Korean Studio JAYUJAJE Just Made the Strangest Clock

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Most clocks want to be noticed. They arrive with Roman numerals, exposed gears, or oversized frames, working hard to earn their place on the wall. The NMK by Seoul-based studio JAYUJAJE takes the opposite position entirely. It barely announces itself. And yet it is, without question, one of the most visually arresting objects I have seen recently.

The NMK is a concept. It does not exist in a store. You cannot buy it. And yet designer Jin Kim of Seoul-based studio JAYUJAJE has photographed it with such care, placed it with such intention against galvanized steel shelving and paper lanterns and stacked design books, that it already feels like a fixture of a room you very much want to live in.

Designer: JAYUJAJE

Start with the face, because that is where everything happens. It is a disc of tightly woven wire mesh, slightly concave, pulled into a shallow cone that draws the eye directly toward its center. The mesh is extraordinarily fine, the kind of density that creates its own optical behavior. At the outer rim it reads as pale silver, nearly transparent. Moving inward, the tone deepens gradually and consistently until the core becomes a near-black that feels less like a color and more like depth. The gradient is not printed or painted. It is a natural consequence of the curvature and mesh density interacting with light. The hands are two flat matte black bars, thin and unadorned, sitting flush against the face. No numbers. No markers. No hour dots. Just the slow movement of two lines across a surface that looks different depending on the angle you are standing at.

The center hub anchors everything. In the lighter version of the clock, it is a solid cylinder of blackened wood, its grain still faintly visible, sitting proud of the mesh face. In what appears to be a material study, the hub takes the form of a rougher, heavier truncated cone in dark stone or dense concrete, resting on a flat wooden disc that acts as a base. Both versions communicate the same thing: weight, presence, and a deliberate contrast between the industrial precision of the mesh and the warmth of a natural material at its core.

The concept draws from a specific philosophical tradition. Jin Kim has grounded the NMK in the worldview of Joseon-era scholars, who understood time not as a series of discrete and measurable units but as a continuous, gentle flow. That context changes how you look at the clock entirely. The absence of numbers is not minimalism for its own sake. It is a point of view. A clock face with nothing to count against refuses to let you fragment the day into anxious increments. The hands move, time passes, and the only reference point is the gradient itself, deepening toward the center like a slow exhale.

That philosophy is paired with a second intention: to record the structural aesthetics of Korean heritage within a contemporary interior. The wire mesh reads as industrial, but the concave disc form and the relationship between the circular face and the cylindrical hub echo the proportions and restraint of traditional Korean craft. The NMK does not announce its cultural references. It holds them quietly inside a form that looks, at first glance, like something from a design laboratory.

JAYUJAJE is the studio of Jin Kim, whose work consistently sits at the intersection of cultural memory and contemporary materiality. The Bugak stool, one of the studio’s earlier pieces, placed traditional Korean butterfly joinery at the structural center of an otherwise spare, modern object. The NMK continues that approach. The heritage is not decorative. It is load-bearing.

What makes a concept worth paying attention to is whether the idea is strong enough to survive the gap between intention and reality. The NMK clears that bar comfortably. The photographs show a physical object with real materials, real light behavior, and real presence in a room. The two-mode functionality, wall-hung or tabletop, works in both configurations without either feeling like a compromise.

Clocks are one of those design categories where the problem is already solved and everything else is a conversation. The NMK enters that conversation with something genuinely different to say: that time does not need to be counted, only felt. Whether it ever goes into production or remains a concept, it has already made its argument. Quietly, precisely, and without a single number on its face.

The post Korean Studio JAYUJAJE Just Made the Strangest Clock first appeared on Yanko Design.

Louis Vuitton Just Made a One-of-a-Kind Clock for UNICEF

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Not every luxury piece earns the word “meaningful.” Beautiful, yes. Covetable, absolutely. But meaningful is a harder category to land in, and the Louis Vuitton Unity Time Object lands there without trying too hard about it.

Unveiled at the Fall-Winter 2026 Men’s Fashion Show in Paris, the piece was created to mark ten years of the Louis Vuitton for UNICEF partnership. A decade of fundraising, direct action, and advocacy for vulnerable children around the world. That’s the kind of milestone that deserves more than a press release, and Louis Vuitton clearly agreed.

Designer: Louis Vuitton

The form alone is worth sitting with for a moment. The clock takes its shape from the LV Soccer Ball, one of the house’s most recognized sporting objects, now reimagined as a sculptural timepiece that functions equally as objet d’art and design statement. A sphere has no front or back, no implied hierarchy, no right way to face. It looks the same from every corner of the room, every corner of the world. For a partnership rooted in the idea that every child deserves access and dignity regardless of where they were born, the shape isn’t just aesthetic. It’s a quiet argument made in steel and gold.

Time on the Unity Time Object is told through two rotating cylinders rather than conventional hands. A sculpted golden steel dome forms the upper half of the clock, and beneath it, one cylinder tracks the hours while the other handles the minutes. The minute cylinder is engraved with Louis Vuitton’s Monogram motif and flowers, with “Louis Vuitton Paris” running along its top. You wind it with a key inserted at the side or top, and the act carries an almost ceremonial quality. It asks you to slow down, to pay attention. In a product era built on digital convenience, that small ritual feels genuinely countercultural.

The movement was developed in collaboration with L’Épée 1839, the Swiss clockmaker with nearly two centuries of history behind it. It’s entirely visible through the skeletonized structure, with every screw and movement plate worked with the Monogram flower. Diamond-set details add richness without overwhelming the mechanical poetry underneath. The whole piece reads like a conversation between decoration and precision, and neither side loses.

The clock arrives in a trophy-style trunk made from Louis Vuitton’s Monogram canvas, handcrafted at the house’s historic Asnières workshop. The brass corner protectors, lock, and clasps are the same ones found on Louis Vuitton trunks going back to the 1860s. A display case built with 160 years of muscle memory, housing an object shaped like a ball. It shouldn’t cohere as well as it does, and yet here we are.

The Unity Time Object is classified as a pièce unique at Sotheby’s, meaning one exists in the world, full stop. It goes to auction on June 9, 2026, with the sale closing June 18, and all proceeds going directly to UNICEF and its work supporting children globally. The estimate is available upon request, which is auction-house language for a number most of us should simply appreciate from a respectful distance.

What I keep returning to is the simplicity of the choice. Louis Vuitton could have marked a ten-year UNICEF partnership with a capsule line or a limited-edition accessory. Something accessible, something scalable. Instead, they made a single, unrepeatable object with no commercial return for the house. Every dollar from the sale goes to the cause. That kind of gesture is rare in luxury, where even the most philanthropic moves tend to benefit the brand as much as the cause.

Good design holds meaning without over-explaining it. The Unity Time Object doesn’t need paragraphs of context to communicate its weight. A sphere. A clock. A trunk built by the same craftspeople who have been making trunks for generations. Whether you’re drawn to the horology, the design, or just the idea of what luxury could stand for at its very best, the Unity Time Object makes a compelling case that beauty and purpose don’t have to be separate conversations.

The post Louis Vuitton Just Made a One-of-a-Kind Clock for UNICEF first appeared on Yanko Design.

Someone Built a Clock With 60 Water Pumps and Zero Regrets

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When I first saw the Water Tower Clock by Strange Inventions, I genuinely had to watch it twice. Not because I didn’t understand it, but because I couldn’t quite believe that someone looked at a pile of 10-cent glass bottles and thought: yes, this is how I’m going to display the time.

The concept is deceptively simple. Each digit on the clock is made up of a fifteen-segment display, except instead of LEDs, each segment is a small glass bottle. When a bottle is filled with dyed water, the segment is active. Empty it, and it disappears. Put enough bottles together in the right configuration and you get numbers. Numbers that tell you it’s 4:37 in the afternoon, rendered entirely in colored water. It’s the kind of idea that sounds ridiculous until you see it running, and then it seems almost obvious.

Designer: Strange Inventions

I love this for a lot of reasons, but the biggest one is that Strange Inventions didn’t try to make something efficient. He made something worth looking at. That’s a design philosophy I respect more than I can easily put into words. There’s an entire industry dedicated to optimizing displays, making them thinner, brighter, more power-efficient. And then someone comes along and asks, what if we pumped water into tiny bottles instead? And somehow, it works.

Behind the scenes, the build is genuinely complex. The clock uses 60 pumps in total, a stepper-driven peristaltic pump paired with membrane-pump boosters, to route dyed water into the precise bottles needed for each digit. The water isn’t doing any actual timekeeping here. It’s purely the display medium. The electronics handle the time; the water handles the theater.

The mechanism for emptying the bottles is particularly clever. Rather than individually draining each one with a separate pump, Strange Inventions engineered a servo-driven linkage that flips all nine bottles in a single digit at once. It’s one motion, one satisfying dump, and the digit resets. Getting that 3D-printed mechanism to work took significant troubleshooting, but watching the finished result operate, you’d never guess it was anything other than effortless.

The tiny bottles, by the way, were found in a random shop for 10 cents apiece. Sounds affordable, right? Until you scale it up to a full clock and the total project cost lands somewhere around $580. That gap between cheap materials and expensive obsession is actually one of my favorite things about independent makers. The individual components are humble. The vision is not.

Visually, the Water Tower Clock sits in a category I struggle to name. It’s not exactly art, though it absolutely qualifies. It’s not just a gadget, though it functions as one. It has the patience of a kinetic sculpture and the practicality of something that actually tells you what time it is. The dyed water catching the light, the slow fill of each segment, the deliberate dump when a digit changes: all of it has a rhythm that most digital objects simply don’t have.

I think what makes projects like this matter to the broader design conversation is that they challenge our assumptions about what a display should look like. We’ve become so accustomed to LEDs and screens that we’ve stopped asking whether there might be a more interesting material to work with. Strange Inventions answered that question with dyed water and glass bottles from a random shop, and the result is one of the more memorable pieces of functional design I’ve come across this year.

It’s also, for what it’s worth, completely impractical in the best possible way. The water will need maintenance, the pumps add complexity, and the whole thing would be thoroughly confused by a power outage. None of that matters. The point isn’t that this is the future of clock displays. The point is that it makes you feel something when you look at it, which is more than most technology ever manages to do. Strange Inventions earns the name.

The post Someone Built a Clock With 60 Water Pumps and Zero Regrets first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Marc Newson designed Jaeger-LeCoultre clock tracks Earth, Moon and seasons with cosmic precision

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Like Jaeger-LeCoultre doesn’t need an introduction, neither does the Australian design icon, Marc Newson. If you want to know what the two in collaboration can create, look no further than the Atmos Hybris Artistica Tellurium. Powered by the in-house caliber 590, it is one of the most enticing horological marvels I have seen. Trust me when I say this, because I have actually seen some fascinating timepieces in the last decade, and I have spent time writing about watches and clocks.

The new Atmos Hybris Artistica Tellurium is ‘inspired by the beauty and the mystery of the cosmos.’ Not the solar system we are a part of, but the ‘cosmos beyond the Earth’s solar system,’ the company notes. It is the result of over 18-years of partnership between Jaeger-LeCoultre and the design genius, which has been designed to run on the most advanced and complex Atmos movements from the watchmaker that is respected for its expertise in mechanical movements.

Designer: Jaeger-LeCoultre

The clock has been through a great deal of iterations to arrive at the current version, which features a new cabinet for the Atmos Tellurium designed by Newson. The glass features 64 constellations that are visible in the Northern Hemisphere, engraved on it, while 539 cabochon-cut sapphires here represent the principal stars.

A pinnacle of haute horlogerie, the Jaeger-LeCoultre Atmos Tellurium is a limited-edition piece (strictly limited to three units) featuring a meteorite dial with hand-painted, 3-dimensional earth inside the glass globe. The clock is created to precisely track Earth’s rotation alongside the lunar phases as the moon rotates around the Earth. The clock recreates the cycles of the sun, earth, and moon with great precision in 3D.

Measuring 188mm thick, the clock’s miniature earth rotates on its axis (like the real thing) in 24 hours, providing the day and night indication. While the Earth rotates, the Moon is seen orbiting it in a complete moon phase (averaging 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 2 seconds). This allows the moon, revolving on its own axis, to display its phases accurately. According to the watchmaker, the moon phase has complete accuracy with a discrepancy of only one day every 5,770 years.

The sun resides in the center of the Atmos Tellurium and the earth, and the moon is designed to orbit around it in one complete year, indicating the seasons (listed on the parameter of the clock) as it turns. In addition to displaying corresponding months and seasons, the clock also displays the zodiacal calendar. The Atmos Tellurium clock is powered by an in-house caliber 590 perpetual movement that operates without human intervention. Yes, as with all Atmos clocks, the Atmos Hybris Artistica Tellurium also winds itself by the expansion and contraction of a gas mixture within an airtight capsule.

The post This Marc Newson designed Jaeger-LeCoultre clock tracks Earth, Moon and seasons with cosmic precision first appeared on Yanko Design.

The F1 Engineer Who Turned Time Into a Kinetic Sculpture

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Most clocks are honest about what they are. They count. They tick. They remind you, with mild urgency, that you are late or almost late or about to be. Robert Spillner’s Luna is not a clock that measures time. It stages it. That’s a subtle but loaded distinction, and it’s exactly why this object is worth paying attention to.

Luna is a fluid wall object that translates the principle of the single-hand watch into a kinetic sculpture, making the moment between past and future perceptible. Behind the hand, a trace of turbulent patterns marks the touched past. Ahead of it stretches calm liquid: the untouched future. The present is the thin, moving line between them. It sounds poetic because it is, but it’s also technically precise, which is kind of the whole point.

Designer: Robert Spillner

Spillner trained as an engineer and initially developed components for Formula 1 cars, used by numerous teams, in a culture where speed, optimization, and victory are everything. With Luna, that paradigm is reversed. Instead of lap times, the focus is on mindful observation; instead of chasing the fastest, it is about pausing, about stillness. The pivot reads like a philosophical reversal, not just a career change, and that tension is embedded in the object itself.

At the heart of Luna is a specially developed fluid Spillner calls Zero Flow Technology. Its core consists of distilled water, additives, micro-particles, and a minimal quantity of genuine lunar dust. The exact composition remains deliberately undisclosed, part of the mystery that invites the observer to immerse themselves in the visual experience rather than merely explain it technically. I think that’s the right call. Part of what makes Luna compelling is that it resists easy explanation. You’re not supposed to look at it and think “clever fluid dynamics.” You’re supposed to feel like time has texture.

The lunar dust takes the cosmic concept to its logical conclusion. These are particles billions of years old that once fell from space to Earth, and they are now carriers of time. Each piece comes with a certificate of authenticity documenting the origin of this cosmic additive. That detail is not just a marketing flourish. It changes the nature of the object.

Aesthetically, Luna presents itself as a square wall or stand object, approximately 400 by 400 millimeters, with a black front and a cast acrylic glass pane at its centre that becomes the stage for the fluid time, framed by a solid, matte-black wooden frame. A small LCD touchscreen, 35 millimeters in diameter, merges the cosmic and digital realms. Time and display brightness can be adjusted easily. The screen is discreet enough that it doesn’t compete with the fluid for visual dominance. It supports the piece without stealing from it, and that balance isn’t easy to pull off.

Luna is handcrafted in Germany as a limited edition. The fluid mixture, developed over years in collaboration with a laboratory, requires weeks of fine-tuning for each unique piece. Every Luna carries an engraved serial number and year of manufacture, signed by the artist, and comes with a certificate for the meteorite dust. Only 99 pieces per year are planned, all made on demand. Luna defines itself clearly as an art object with a time function, not as an industrial small series. That self-awareness matters.

The question people tend to ask about objects like this is whether they’re worth it. I’d reframe the question. Luna isn’t competing with your iPhone or your smartwatch. It’s not trying to optimize anything in your day. It’s making an argument about how we relate to time, which is a thing most of us don’t think about until we’re running out of it. The fact that it’s beautiful while doing this isn’t a bonus. It’s the method. Design, when it’s working at its best, changes how you see the thing it’s describing. Luna does that with time. And for an object that started life inside Formula 1 engineering labs, that’s a remarkable distance to travel.

The post The F1 Engineer Who Turned Time Into a Kinetic Sculpture first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Minimalist Analog World Clock Is the Upgrade You Didn’t Know Your Desk Needed

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This 12-sided clock turns global timekeeping into a calmer desk ritual

Keeping up with different time zones sounds simple until it becomes part of your everyday routine. You check your phone before a call, open another tab to confirm the hour, do a quick mental calculation, and still second-guess whether it’s too early in Tokyo or too late in New York. Not to forget the perils of push-notifications – a quick check of time leads you down a drain of doom-scrolling that you take an hour to return from! To add a layer of analog convenience in this increasingly digital setup, I present the Rolling World Clock.

Why Traditional World Clocks Never Quite Feel Right

The Rolling World Clock takes a familiar category and gives it a much smarter form. Instead of relying on screens, menus, or a row of tiny city labels, this analog desk object turns world time into a simple physical interaction. Built with 12 sides, each representing a major timezone city, it lets you roll from one location to another and instantly read the local time with a single hand. It’s a cleaner, more tactile answer to a problem that has long been solved in ways that feel unnecessarily digital.

Designer: MASAFUMI ISHIKAWA .Design

Click Here to Buy Now: $49 Hurry, only a few left!

Change time zones with a single roll.

Using The Analog Experience Feels Better

That analog quality is a big part of the appeal. There’s a growing interest in devices that help people step back from constant digital interaction, and this clock fits neatly into that trend without feeling nostalgic for nostalgia’s sake. It still solves a modern problem, especially for people working with global teams or keeping in touch with friends and family abroad, but it does so in a way that feels grounded and human. You’re not swiping, tapping, or toggling between screens. You’re just rolling the object in your hand and reading the time.

Built for modern routines, expressed through simple interactions.

The city lineup also makes it genuinely useful. The 12 sides cover major global time zones, including London, Paris, Cape Town, Moscow, Los Angeles, Karachi, Mexico City, New York, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney, and New Caledonia. That gives it enough range to be practical for a wide variety of work and lifestyle needs, whether you’re coordinating meetings, planning travel, or just trying not to message someone at the wrong hour.

Built for a More Intentional Desk

For the desk setup fanatics, there’s also a strong aesthetic argument here. The Rolling World Clock is available in black and white, two finishes that make it easy to integrate into a modern desk setup without fighting for attention. It has the kind of understated presence that works especially well for young professionals who want their workspace to feel differentiated without becoming visually noisy. It’s functional, yes, but it also reads as a design object, the sort of piece that quietly signals taste.

Clean lines, one hand, no distractions.

That balance of utility and personality is what makes this more than a novelty. If you work across cities, collaborate with clients in different regions, or simply like the idea of keeping global time visible without adding another glowing screen to your day, this clock makes a strong case for itself. It taps into a broader shift toward analog tools that feel slower, more deliberate, and more human, while still solving a very modern problem.

Feels as good in the hand as it looks on the desk.

Why It’s Worth Picking Up Now

At $49, the Rolling World Clock lands in a sweet spot for a desk upgrade that feels distinctive without being overcommitted. It also has the kind of giftable appeal that comes from being both useful and conversation-worthy. And with only a few left, it carries just enough urgency to make hesitation a risky move.

If your desk could use an object that feels smarter, calmer, and more intentional than another digital widget, the Rolling World Clock is worth grabbing now. It’s currently available in the Yanko Design Shop in black and white, and with limited stock remaining, this is one of those rare functional design pieces you probably shouldn’t wait on.

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