• Nooka
• Berrymatch
• MOMA
• Zot
• Zoo
• Zen

A Better Watch

Sure, time keeps marching on, but does it always have to go in circles? For centuries, people measured its progress in only one way: The big hand and the little hand, spinning round and round. More recently, analog and digital timepieces came along, but they gave us little more than drab numerical statements of how many hours are left before the closing bell.

Designer Matthew Waldman, however, wants people to look at time in an entirely new way. Rather than relying on hands or digits, his Nooka series of timepieces use minimalist bars and dots to track time in a linear progression, which, after all, is how time seems to pass. The result is an accessory that's completely modern, yet does something that is as old as, well, time.

"I wanted these pieces to express the linear 'point A to point B' nature of life," says Waldman. "I also wanted to create a universal expression, free of numbers and ultimately more intuitive."

A well-known and highly regarded conceptual artist who also runs the graphic design studio Berrymatch, Waldman was staring at a giant wall clock in a London hotel in 1997, when he recalled how, in first grade, before he and his classmates could read clock faces, they learned to understand time with a math class worksheet - they learned to understand time linearly.

"It struck me then that there are different ways to express time," he says. "I sketched out some designs on a napkin. These became the basis for the design patents I later submitted."

All told, Waldman now has five timepiece patents in the Nooka series, and there is nothing out there remotely like them. They were a hit when first introduced at the MOMA store in New York in 2004, selling out as fast as Waldman could produce them. Bearing futuristic names like Zot, Zoo, and Zen, the watches track the hours with solid bars or dots and the minutes and seconds digitally - and present this information in a direct, unique, and even playful way.

"I was trying to produce something expressive, useful, and provocative," says Waldman. Mission accomplished.

 

Posted on July 24, 2006