18 years of schooling taught me that watching the clock makes time run about half as fast as normal, but this 5-to-9 clock actually uses that to its advantage. Created by Lamplabs, a new design company with an emphasis on lighting, the 5-to-9 is your basic circular analog clock, but with the sections from 9pm to 5pm removed. That way it only emphasizes the hours when you’re not at work or not sleeping. And if you spend that precious amount of time staring at this clock, it will make it seem like a lot longer than just 4 hours.
The clock’s also got a lead weight on a chain hanging off it that “symbolically represents the counterbalance required to achieve a measured life.” So yeah, that part is a little unnecessary and kinda preachy, but I still think the clock has a clever design. And if you agree you’ll want to head over to Kickstarter where you can pledge/pre-order one in white for $85, or your choice of cherry veneer, bamboo or maple plywood finish for $100. Just keep in mind it’s one of those sites that requires a minimal amount of promised funds before it goes into production, and with just $195 of this project’s $2,500 goal pledged, I have a feeling it might not ever see the light of day.
The standalone timer is yet another gadget made almost obsolete by app-capable smartphones, but the Enso Pearl from Salubrion manages to make a strong case as to why you’d still want to keep one around. The most obvious reason is the timer’s stylish circular design (enso is a Japanese word meaning circle after all) and the ring which is drawn onto the LCD display as the timer counts down, providing a more graphical way to visualize how much time is left.
The Enso Pearl seems particularly targeted at those who like to meditate or do yoga since it can be programmed with up to 50 interval timers right after another for taking you through a meditative sequence. But it also serves as a compact and relaxing travel alarm since it plays the chimes of Tibetan or Japanese singing bowls instead of some incredibly annoying electronic screetch. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if all that’s worth $99, or if you’ll just stick with the basic timer in the iPhone’s clock app.
Wall clocks are pretty much just a decorative item these days, and these ‘Time Paper’ poster clocks make frequent redecorating easy and guilt-free. They’re quite literally just composed of a poster printed with a clock face design and a simple clock mechanism hidden behind it. When you get sick of the design you just rip down the poster and recycle it, and then throw up a new poster with a handful of thumb tacks. It’s just too bad they range in price from ~$63 (¥5,250) up to ~$88 (¥7,350) from Boo-Hoo-Woo.com.
If you’re a fan of unusual clocks and leaving your hi-def TV running for hours on end, you might want to look into the Blu-ray version of Maarten Baas’ Real Time exhibition which was shown in Milan earlier this year. According to BLTD, the Blu-ray disc will include 12 hours of what appears to be your standard red segmented LCD display, but turns out to be a cleverly backlit artpiece with someone in the background physically painting and erasing the segments to change the time. As clocks go it looks like it’s horribly inaccurate, but as an art piece I find it oddly fascinating to watch… Will you look at the time!
From a distance, Mr. Clock appears to be uncooperative and even stubborn. Since he assumes you’re not paying attention to him, instead of showing the time, his segmented display will just show random, nonsensical configurations. But when you get right up close to him, he’ll immediately start performing his time keeping and reporting duties by displaying the current time. He was designed by Hye-Yeon Park as an art piece more than anything, but he also finally answers that age-old question; if a clock’s ticking away in a gallery and there’s no one around to see it, does it really display the time?
You can file this one under desk crap, but as desk crap goes, it’s a rather clever combination of an hourglass ‘sand’ timer and those immiscible liquid devices. Instead of sand, this hourglass timer, which runs for about 30 minutes, uses an orange colored liquid that is lighter than the clear liquid, so when flipped upside down the hourglass appears to run in reverse. The sand effect is more convincing if you give the thing a healthy shake before flipping it so that thousands of tiny bubbles are created, and though I’m no scientist, I’m pretty sure if you use it during a lightning storm, or on the day of the equinox, it will reverse time. Get it from the Implex Online Store for about $36. (¥3,150)
So how do you convince people to keep buying wall clocks when nearly every single gadget they carry can show them the time? Well one way is to turn it into a mesmerizing kinetic sculpture like the Continue Time clock created by Sander Mulder. The inspiration for the design actually came after an office clock fell to the floor, dislodging the minute and second hands, which is kind of how the Continue Time works. The hour hand remains connected to the ‘center’ of the clock face, but the minute hand extends from the end of the hour hand while the second hand extends from the end of the minute hand. So in the product shot above the clock is actually showing the time as 3:54:32. The video below kind of helps you to understand the movements, but more importantly it shows the clock in motion.
And while it has ‘one-off concept’ written all over it, the Continue Time clock is actually being produced in a limited run of 40 pieces. But since you have to contact the studio for a quote if you’re interested, you can safely assume that affordability is not at the top of its feature list.
No, it’s not powered by the sun, or wind, or water or even urine. The Front & Back clock, created by the The Wrong Objects, is powered by a good ol’ set of AA’s and is so proud of it that it uses the batteries as the hands on the clock face. So if there ever was a device in your home to save the brand-name Duracell or Energizer batteries for, this clock would be it. Unless, like the clock, you’re not embarrassed to put a set of Rayovacs in there. The Front & Back concept was recently spotted at the 2010 DMY International Design Festival in Berlin, though I’m unsure if it will ever be available for sale.
I’m afraid I don’t know much about this amazing mechanical clock which is apparently located outside the C.C. Lemon Hall in Shibuya, Tokyo, except that I would probably spend an entire day watching it do its thing.
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