This is such a simple but very neat idea from Rafael Morgan: a clock with hands that have magnifying lenses to make the little numbers bigger and easier to read for telling time. I hope a producer picks this concept up and manufactures it!
[via Core77]
Noemi on 04.06.2010 at 17:25 PM
It’s great idea!!!
Bryan on 04.06.2010 at 17:44 PM
This is just exactly the kind of thing that makes me despair of designers! Why-o-why?! Take a practical design that has worked perfectly well for hundreds of years. Then make it bad by making the numbers too small to read. Then fix it by adding magnifying glasses to the hands? It’s like something Homer Simpson would invent.
Utterly, utterly pointless. Is your calendar stuck on April 1?
MsUnreliable on 04.06.2010 at 22:15 PM
Oh Bryan, life must be terribly serious in your corner of the world. Some design, believe it or not, is still about having fun! It’s not all about the production line and “doing things as they’ve always been done”, it’s about exploring new ideas and concepts, even if they’re not to everyone’s tastes.
Personally, I’d have this clock on my wall in an instant.
Bryan on 04.07.2010 at 09:36 AM
Life is not serious at all here, far from it. I *love* design, but for me form follows function. Of course design should be about fun, but its primary purpose should be about making things work well. Introducing unnecessary defects and then inventing a ‘clever’ solution is just pointless.
This reminds me of a bizarre design for a dining table I saw recently. The top was like a normal table, but instead of legs it had some sort of design like tree roots. Yes, it looked ‘interesting’, I suppose, but it was alleged to be a dining table, and I fail to see how any normally proportioned human could have sat at it comfortably. There was nowhere to put your legs.
As I said, I *love* design, but never at the expense of common sense and practicality. The essence of good design is not that there’s nothing left to add, it’s that there’s nothing left to take away. Adding two unnecessary things that compensate for one another is just clutter.
Jeremy on 04.07.2010 at 09:58 AM
Pretty cool – This design would be just a little better if it had 5 minute increments on an interior or exterior circle with the minute hand hovering over them.
a4amazn on 04.07.2010 at 12:33 PM
Bryan I agree with what you are saying.
But I can also see that maybe the designer wanted your eye to focus on the time and have all the other numbers fall back.
All in all, I think its kind of clever. Kind of. :)
Karisha Solomon on 04.07.2010 at 13:29 PM
Great product for older adutls that have trouble with vision. I will def. feature this on my blog.
Bryan on 04.07.2010 at 14:28 PM
Karisha, people of any age who have trouble with vision would find it much more convenient to wear eye glasses. Perhaps this mad designer could make them a special pair. He could use two pairs of binoculars. Look through one pair the wrong way, that would make things smaller. Then look through the other pair the right way to make the image bigger again. Makes about as much sense as this crazy clock.
Another example of just how wrong this is – the hands. Normal clocks have thicker hands that are easy to see. They also distinguish the hands by having the minute hand longer than the hour hand. This disaster has two hands of equal length and width. Not much good if you’re across the room.
Rafael Morgan on 04.08.2010 at 08:54 AM
Hi there!
Thanks for publishing my work and thanks for everyone who commented! I really appreciate it.
Cheers,
Rafael Morgan.
http://www.rafaelmorgan.com
Minutti on 04.08.2010 at 10:46 AM
very good idea. But i agree with jeremy, because in the biggest part of the time the lenses stay doing nothing in the white area. Perhaps, if the clock have each minute and the hand minute show them would be cooler
enrolled agent exam prep on 04.09.2010 at 04:51 AM
Really very unique idea! :)
First time I’ve actually seen such a concept design on a clock. :)
superpao on 04.13.2010 at 15:31 PM
this is kind of genius