Happy Hour

Design Process

Move mouse on and off the clock.

This week I decided to a take on how time moves during the pandemic. There has been an adjustment in the way we perceive time. Though there is a steady passing of time it is not in sync with how I have been biologically measuring time. The only time of the day that I become aware of ‘time’ is around 5 O’clock. This clock holds true to this feeling by the hands being constant with everything around it moving in a predictable but haphazard way. I added in a dimension of months since its towards the end of the year and I still feel like this year hasn’t really begun. I used an old typeface I am really tired of from the 90’s called blur, I never thought I would ever be in a position to use this type unless its satirically. It came in handy because the other typeface i tried didn’t quite have the outdated hazy feeling of movement. When the mouse close to the clock face, what was a hazy but still somewhat controlled movement is disrupted large aggressive and overlapping months.

Reflection

I am not sure exactly why 5 PM stick out although I have a few theories, the most probable one being because it signals the end of the day. When I was working it was a time of thinking about what you got done during the day, what else needs to get done and what my plans are for the rest of the day. Although I am not at work anymore, it still represents the same lucid end of the day. In my clock design, things moves differently than we are used to including the months. Initially I wanted to leave the months ‘quiet’ and moving similar to the hours to represent the feeling of merging time, but it didn’t quite represent the interaction with clock I wanted. What I have noticed during this pandemic is the more control I want, the less I have. The problem when trying to plan something for the future is a speculation at best (I have had a few travel plans for this year and so far none of them have remotely come close to being fulfilled). Considering none of us know what the future holds, as of now making plans feel like an overlap of aggressive speculations and dates. Everyone is at different stage due to the pandemic, whether it’s controlled travel, lockdowns or just mental exhaustion it is almost impossible to have control over plans for the near future. We have started to build structures with classes, assignments and to do lists that is starting to lower the chaos (or lack of). Hopefully in a few months my clock will be dated and irrelevant, much like the type used.