The idea behind the Clock Clock project – which later scaled to our A million Times editions – was conceived during this period. We experimented with animated typography and developed a font that was based on a grid of clocks, whereby we made the clock-hands stop in certain positions in order to create letters and digits. Once the clock-hands rotated again the characters would fall apart. Using clocks to show this circle of formation and its decline was intriguing and, after some experimentation, it proved to be beautiful too. Even though the movement of each clock-hand was very restricted and simple – as it can just rotate around the ever-same centre – when programmed to move simultaneously with the other clock-hands, referring to each other in time and space, it created something with emergent properties: the whole was more than just the sum of its parts.

What triggered this typography experiment was a diffuse question that followed us throughout our studies: “How time designs and how to design time?” Contemplating this question is always topical and it still leaves us and likely most others a bit scared, considering that once out in the world, everything and everyone turns into matter on Time’s workbench. The clock ticks on, there is no way back. Many have argued that the vast abandoning of religious narratives or metaphysical theories in secular societies brought us into a position where the only choice that seems to be left when not expecting anything after death is to optimise the here and now. YOLO. Carpe Diem. In other words: designing the passing of time. That appears to be the mindset of among many of us millennials. Whether yoga, sports, dieting, entertainment or travel are good ‘design tools’ in this context is questionable. Paradoxically, the urge to optimise the here and now often leads to another dogma, namely the call for efficiency that leaves unfree, stressed or depressed individuals that simply feel paralysed when facing an imagined time scarcity.