Thursday Salute to Originals: The Delete Clock
“How did it get so late so soon?”
As Dr. Seuss poetically posed this question in one of his whimsical rhymes, we too are constantly amused at how quickly time in the office seems to fly by. Between phone calls, emails, meetings, social media, drawings, and deadlines, a bystander might wonder how anything ever gets accomplished. Sporadic glances at the digital clocks on our laptop screens remind us that there is never enough time in the day.
Designers Li Ke, Pang Sheng Li & Chen Yi Lin created the Delete Clock to explore the limitations and opportunities that time embodies. This clock surface is made with whiteboard which can be written on with erasable marker. With quadrants representing blocks of time throughout the day, users can scribble their daily schedule. The clock hands sweep along keeping time as normal. The key element here: the bottom of the clock hand is an eraser, wiping away the scheduled tasks as the minutes tick away.
While the relationship to time is deep seated and its passing has different meanings based on context, the Delete Clock plays on universal relationships: time, cycles, measurement, and achievement.
One thing about this clock would certainly drive us nuts – losing the satisfaction of crossing something off of our to-do lists by drawing a thick black line across the sheet of paper. In the design industry though, is anything ever really complete?!
Image credits: Yanko Design