saikat biswas: obligatory design clock

‘obligatory design clock’

‘obligatory design clock’ designed by indian born, finland based industrial designer saikat biswas tells time without any hour or minute hands. instead, the hour markings dynamically change to show the time. the model is 30 cm in diameter, 1.5 cm in thickness and runs on 2 AAA batteries. functioning much like a common wall clock, it is run by the same quartz based electro mechanical driver (movements), but instead of the hour and minute indicator there is a disc with two color graphics attached to the hour hand. the front dial has thin slits at every hour marking through which a thin portion of the inner disc is seen. the front and side is covered in a protective plastic layer.

‘obligatory designer clock’ by saikat biswas

front and backside of ‘obligatory designer clock’

1. protective cover 2. dial with hour marking slits 3. disc with two color graphics 4. back cover and clock driver

alternative clock variation dividing the length of  each hour bar into 4 parts

the clock is developed to provide tentative time and does not focus on accuracy. biswas has also created variations that make it easier for reading time a bit more accurately. in one option, there are markings on the disc inside which can be seen from the exterior. they divide the length of the each hour bar into four parts indicating fifteen minute intervals. meanwhile, the second option features three thin circular lines again as guides for every fifteen minutes. finally, the third alternative has small dots that also function as time markers.

three large circular lines act as markers for fifteen minute intervals

three dots as guides for every 15 minutes

the angle between two hour marks are divided in 60 segments. the length of the hour-mark is also divided radially in 60 segments. each block in the resulting grid represents a minute. as a minute grid is very small, it makes the hour mark window too thin to be seen from a distance for a 30 cm dial, a 30 x 30 grid is used and shown above. each block represents 2 minutes in the above grid.

saikat biswas was a shortlisted participant of the ‘beyond silver‘ competition organized by designboom in collaboration with macef.