You count the number of shaded dots; let’s say there are five. Then, you count the number of shaded bars; for example, 25. That means it’s 5:25. That’s how you tell time, Nooka-style. It’s not as hard as it sounds once you see the watches yourself. Counting the minute bars doesn’t really mean you have to count the bars one by one. They have indicators in multiples of five.
“I don’t come from the watch world… that wasn’t the motivation,” confessed Nooka founder Matthew Waldman when I asked him how on earth he came up with such an idea. “I was doing branding and interactive design and I wanted to train my brain to think more about intuitive interface.”
In 1997, Matthew had a Eureka moment while staring at a wall clock in a hotel. He had a flashback to an elementary math class and realized that there were very limited options for time display. Immediately, he sketched top-of-head ideas for potential designs on a napkin and after working on them, secured a patent.
“It took many years to get from concept to product, but when [it did], it took a life of its own and Nooka became a company,” he said of the process. He wanted something simple and futuristic at the same time. He wanted something that transcends, well, time. The results are square-ish watches in bright bubblegum shades, black and whites and metallics.
“The future of watches is not watches,” Matthew replied when I probed on what he meant by ‘futuristic.’ “When I talk about futurism, I’m not saying that dots are the best way, but you can show it to anyone—even to someone from another planet—and they would understand it. It’s totally independent of language and number systems.”
And that’s not the only idea Mr. Forward Thinker has up his sleeve. He also proposes an hourglass type of mechanism. But instead of sands of time flowing through a narrow tube, it’s a screen being filled up with tiny bars on a 12-hour period. He says that counting the bars is a breeze once you get the hang of it (in case you don’t, there’s a cheat button that displays the digits).
So, does that mean that Nooka is a watch company? Yes, in the sense that they do make watches as a flagship product. And no, as Matthew maintains that the timepieces are just one part of the project.
“If I’m gonna do other things, they have to have the core values of the brand, which is this sexy, optimistic future, not the geeky sci-fi future, but the real future,” he explained.
“What communicates universally?” he asked rhetorically and segued, “A fragrance is something like that. You can read what’s on the box, but at the end of the day, you spray it and it either communicates something you like or you don’t like. It’s a very simple way of dealing with a product—in that sense, very Nooka.”
The fragrance he was referring to is Matthew’s own development with Pierre-Constantin Guéros, the Nooka eau de parfum. It’s a crisp, clean gender-ambiguous scent with notes of Japanese Yuzu, pink pepper, polished steel and vintage leather. “[But] it’s not unisex,” he refuted my insinuation that it was.
“We’re not unisex [as people]. We have two sexes. I design for men but I wanted to stay away from this cookie-cutter way of thinking. My job as a designer is not to tell you what’s masculine or feminine. It’s up to you to decide,” Matthew declared. And if you’ve been paying close attention and are connecting the proverbial dots, you’ll find hints of universality and futurism in that statement—very Nooka.
