Design



This chapter is dealing with the overall design of the clock “The Times” and the design of the different layers that add up to the illuminating part of the clock.



The Design of “The Times” is heavily influenced by the design of the product “QLOCKTWO” by Biegert & Funk, which can be seen in Fig. 1. This product is commercially available and has won several product design awards. The most important characteristic of “QLOCKTWO” is that the time is not displayed with the help of numbers or clock hands. The time is displayed with words. This is the main characteristic “QLOCKTWO” and “The Times” have in common. More identical characteristics are listed below: · Words representing the time are illuminated · The reading direction of the words is vertical · Square shape of the clock · Slim appearance



The goal of the product design was to make our product look like a newspaper article. The newspaper design is closely linked to our course “Print and Media Technology”. Since the clock shows a strong resemblance to a newspaper article it opens up an interesting distribution possibility. The clock could function as a subscription gift for subscribers of newspapers. It is very common that newspaper companies give out gifts for signing up a subscription to win new readers. Our product could be a unique gift, which helps the newspaper company to attract the attention of potential subscribers. The production of a clock for a particular newspaper would be quite easy. For example, the colour of the clock frame would be changed to fit to the corporate identity of the newspaper company and a particular trademark logo would be added. These are just some possibilities.

In the following paragraph the similarities between the design of “The Times” and the design of a newspaper article are described. The fonts, which were used in the design, are classic newspaper font called “Times” and “Times New Roman”. The headline has the font “Times New Roman” like the British newspaper “The Times”. The initial letter of the words “It’s” has a much larger type size than the following letters. This is common for the beginning of a traditional newspaper article. The separators that were used can be found in traditional newspaper articles as well.

Production costs(?) are low, possible as giveaway > MMR: I don't know if the production costs for our project are lower than those for the LED version. I think we have the more expensive version.  The illuminating part of the clock consists of five layers, which needed to be designed.