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If you could turn back time, you may just elect to revisit the mid-fifties. Along with all that is cool about mid-century modern design, it was also the decade that invented the Nixie tube. Trademarked by the Burroughs Corporation, NIX I (an abbreviation for Numeric Indicator Experimental Number 1) tubes were the earliest form of digital display, showing numerals — and sometimes letters — with an orange glow inside a glass tube. Formerly used in electrical equipment, they are now the inspiration for Paul Parry’s enchanting steampunk, vintage clocks.

After production in the West cut off, the manufacture of Nixie tubes continued in Russia and the Ukraine, but only until the early 1990s. These days, they can only be sourced online, and some collectors will pay hundreds for a set of tubes in good condition. However, they are seldom used as well as when Parry makes his Bad Dog Designs timely creations from his converted stable in Staffordshire, UK.

A career in electronics and a childhood of taking his toys apart and putting them back together again to greater effect has led Parry to really coming up with the goods thishttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNvstth2p0c time. In the past, Nixie tubes, also known as “cold cathode tubes” as they have no internal heater and are cold to the touch, would have been hidden away within equipment — like old fuel pumps — but now they are a prominent feature of Parry’s clocks. Tiny metal pieces all stacked together create numerals which emit an orange, gloom-like glow when given an electrical charge, all encased in glass tubes and looking like something that would be at home in a 1950s sci-fi movie. Or a Hammer House of Horror film set in the basement laboratory of a crazed scientist.

Starting in early 2014, in his small home workshop in a spare bedroom, Parry began to create his embellished and startling Nixie clocks using bits of discarded electrical equipment, a lot of which was made before plastic was readily available. Brass, wood, copper parts, old jewelry boxes and antique cases all go into these intriguing inventions. The first one used an electric Voltmeter; it was taken apart and made into a clock together with Nixie tubes and scavenged, recycled bits of equipment.


A “basic” Nixie clock uses a small rectangular base with six tubes on top, or a clear plastic box containing the Nixies and an electrical circuit board. Impressive as these are, it can then get a whole lot crazier!
Shown in the video above, the “Gemini In Tempore” Nixie Tube Clock was featured in Sky 1’s production of “Fungus The Bogeyman”.

With a steam engine on top, dual-time Nixie displays and a display that shows temperature, the Gemini is the business! Made from an old 1940s combined Volt and Amp meter, as the engine runs, the clock vents steam from its side. At its center, there’s an old gyroscope from a decommissioned WWII Spitfire plane. It uses materials and construction methods that were available at the time.

The “Bombe” Kinetic Nixie clock pays homage to the inventor and founder of computer science, Alan Turing. It refers to his “Bombe” device at Bletchley Park, which helped British cryptologists decipher the Enigma Computer’s encrypted messages during WWII. It is multicolored and gorgeous — and retailing at £3950, it really is the bomb!

“Nixie tubes were once popular in the 1950’s and 1960’s and used in many electronic gadgets of the time, from petrol pumps to military equipment. Every clock is handmade, more a piece of art than a timepiece — by their very nature they are individually constructed from recycled equipment, or original vintage items. Inside however, the latest microprocessor technology from PV Electronics is used to drive these long forgotten tubes. I enjoy making clocks as my hobby either for general sale, or directly for the end user as a commissioned piece, as well as Corporate clocks. If you want one then feel free to get in touch on my website.” – Paul Parry

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This clock doesn’t just tell you what time it is – it automatically orders pizza when you tell it to. The world’s first smart clock that will feed you, too, PizzaTime by Artefact Group uses the Edison platform to connect to the Domino’s Pizza Tracker API so all you have to do is press down on the button, twist it to your pizza choice and press down again to order.

You pre-program the clock with payment information and your favorite types of pizza to streamline the process, so as long as you’re predictable in your pizza selections, it literally takes no more than the push of a button to have food at your door within 30-45 minutes. The clock was created as part of Intel’s global IoT Hackathon Roadshow, in which designers spend 48 hours imagining and creating.

“PizzaTime won’t exactly be winning us productivity awards any time soon,” says Artefact, “but our goal was to demonstrate the potential for the Internet of Things to be not only utilitarian, but also delightful. It is these edge scenarios and sort of Mad Lib situations that make the Internet of Things so exciting.”

Want to create your own? The designers offer up the ‘recipe’ on their website, including the code and an app for displaying the pixel images on the clock face.

About Artefact Group

“As consultants, we do plenty of client-oriented software development: building new websites and digital experiences, creating mobile apps, adding features to existing software, helping to improve process and workflow, and building prototypes for our clients’ great ideas. We’ve also created solutions to our internal barriers to collaboration under our sister company, 10,000ft.”

“As the engineering arm of a company that also offers user experience design, interaction design, industrial design, product strategy and a host of other services, we end up touching a bunch of things that are not typical engineering responsibilities (at least for me). This includes embedded software drivers for new hardware, virtual reality, 4k touch displays, voice recognition, unity gaming, BrakePack and PizzaTime. That’s right, PizzaTime!”

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With no time display, this minimalist wooden clock design won’t give you anxiety about how much time you have left to sleep if you wake up and glance at it in the middle of the night. It will, however, awaken you at a set time in a rather unusual and potentially disturbing way: with the sounds of a woodpecker.

The Alarming Clock by Natalie Duckett and Lee Murray features alarms to signal both ends of the sleep cycle, providing an alert when it’s time to get ready for bed as well as in the morning. A digital time display is hidden in the base, but accessible when you need it.

But it’s the manner with which The Alarming Clock wakes you up that makes it so unusual: it has a wooden ‘beak’ that emulates the tapping of a woodpecker.

The exact sounds the clock makes vary depending on what you place it next to. A soft surface might produce a very gentle sound, a hollow glass will ring, and a heavy object will make you think there’s really a woodpecker pecking away right beside your bed.

From Mocoloco:

“The Alarming Clock is made from natural materials to reflect that sleep is a natural process. Each clock is hand crafted from oak and assembled on a made-to-order basis. Touch sensitive technology means users can easily switch off the alarm when rising and shining from a full night’s sleep.”

“The Alarming Clock is the creation of Scottish designers Natalie Duckett and Lee Murray. Founder Natalie explains: ‘The Alarming Clock is a development of my original design and concept launched as a university project back in 2010. Due to the amount of interest I received I decided to keep working on it and develop it into a product that could be sold.’”

“Lee talks about how the clock has been developed: ‘A lot of the success from the original Alarming Clock celebrated the fact that the clock’s time face had been completely removed and this had to be continued. The time face is still not on show but has been discretely placed on the underside of the product.'”

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People have found all kinds of creative ways to display the photos that they hold dear to them, but if you can make these decorative objects functional they will be doubly treasured. The photo wall clock tutorial from Photojojo gives detailed instructions to help you do just that.

Creating this beautiful piece of functional wall art takes a bit of planning, but not much hard labor. Simply pick out 12 treasured photos with frames, map out your desired layout, and assemble a clock kit from a craft store. Then hang it all on the wall for a one-of-a-kind work of art.

Figuring out which photos make the cut might be the hardest part of all. Some ideas: photos of you or a family member from every year of school from first grade to senior year; pictures of places you’ve vacationed; or nature pictures arranged by season.

This low-cost project would also be exceptionally beautiful – and personal – with a selection of your favorite small pieces of art. As long as they can be framed and coordinated with the size of the clock kit, just about any images could be used. For detailed instructions visit the project page on Photojojo.

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This unique clean energy clock promises to run on completely free energy – no batteries or outlets required.  All you need is a little dirt. That’s right – dirt! The Soil Clock from Dutch designer Marieke Staps uses the natural metabolism of biological life to power its display, requiring only the periodic addition of water. That’s probably the greenest type of digital clock you’ll ever find.

The Soil Clock has two small electrodes trailing from it which plug right into the soil. The electrodes contain copper and zinc, metals which work with the soil’s natural electrolytes to create enough clean electricity to keep the clock running virtually indefinitely. The apocalypse could come, and you’d still be hangin’ out with your working digital clock.

Although the clock can run with just soil and water, the designer recommends putting plants into the soil. This is both to make the entire setup more beautiful and to remind you to keep the soil moist. If the plants die, you’ll suddenly be out of time.

More from the designer

“Free and environmentally friendly energy forever and ever. This clock runs on mud. The metabolism of biological life together with the chemical reaction of copper and zinc produce enough electricity to keep a digital clock working. The plants are purely for decoration and a reminder that the technique needs water now and then to work.”

About Marieke Staps

“Marieke Staps is a designer currently based in Tilburg the Netherlands. In 2008 she graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven in the department Man & Activity. Her work is inspired by technique and craftmanship. But sometimes the smallest things in life can also be an inspiration to her work. Her way of working is to start big with all the imagination she has. The starting point is almost impossible. Then she takes up the challenge and creates functional and clear design.”

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When it comes to conversions – particularly ones with sweeping views – it is hard to beat the minimalist approach, letting context and background speak for themselves.

And so it is with this project by Minimal USA, a partial renovation in DUMBO on the waterfront, in the most luxurious residence the area has to offer (valued at 25 million dollars).

The building and tower itself date back to 1915, with the top later converted into a whopping 6500-square-foot loft that looks out in all directions.

Imported this, triple-lacquered that, the details are of course top-of-the-line stuff, but really, the best part about them is their simplicity in shape, style and detail against an amazing series of architectural and urban backdrops.

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Glancing at a clock constantly, whether you are waiting for something or not, only serves to cause stress. Perhaps the way to ease this stress is to hang up a clock that is less about precision and more about visual language.

The About Time clock, designed by Fullbright scholar Louie Rigano, is composed of three overlapping plastic circles, kind of like a Venn diagram. Each circle’s size is equal to the orbit of a traditional clock’s corresponding hands.

The outer-most point of each circle points to the spot that would be represented by a number on a traditional clock, indicating the time by a rather broad space rather than the precise tip of an arrow. Still, one would be hard-pressed to glance at this clock and know for certain what time it is at that moment.

As time passes, the circles all move around and around, constantly creating new shapes and new colors. Replacing stress-inducing numbers and arrows with the lovely fluid visual language of colors, shapes and movement serves to create an entirely new – yet utterly baffling – sort of timepiece.

“About-Time is a clock that challenges our power of perception and intuition. Featuring a constantly changing composition, through both color and form, it invites us to view the idea of time from a fresh perspective. Three translucent circles, which possess a logical visual hierarchy (the largest circle tells the hour, the smallest tells the second), pivot atop a larger white circle. The locations of the circles’ outer most points refer to the time. Traditional clocks, utilizing written numbers, rely on reading the information. This clock relies solely on visual information in the form of varying colors and shapes. Time is manifested into a new and purely visual language. Also check out an alternate version using triangles.”

Louie Rigano is an industrial designer originally from New Jersey and currently based in London.

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Black, then white, then back to black again, this large light-sensitive wall clock shifts colors as day turns to dusk then dawn again- the Organic Light-Emitting Diodes display dark-colored numerals during daylight hours and light numbers into the night. Visually, it is almost like a vertical-hung, room-illuminating, wall-surface version of the vintage LED wrist watch.

Each over-sized digital number is independently attached to a surface (and completely wire-free) so you can place and space them as you wish on any interior wall, a contemporary decorative touch that also tells time. Softly-rounded rectangular corners make these child-friendly and relatively easy to install as well – that is, once these prototypes from Kibardin Design find a manufacturer and go on sale for real.

The aesthetic of the idea are recognizably patterned after the familiar giant-sized, billboard style numerals we are used to seeing on everything from small nightstand alarm clocks to huge sports scoring boards. It might not keep time at the atomic level, but its energy-efficient power system should last a long time – and cheap materials will hopefully keep the price down as well when the time comes you can buy one. Touch-sensitive panels let you change the time without moving them. More durable than wood or glass and lighter than metal, the unique hybrid polycarbonate surface is sustainable as well as durable by design.

“Digital clock: only figures, no case, only the necessary – only accurate time. Each figure has self-contained power supply and independent control, it can be fixed to any surface autonomously. A light sensor will switch the clock to an invert mode: the figures are white in the dark time of day and black at daytime.”

“We are still working on the Black & White Clock, but due to the high price of OLED screens and accumulators it is not currently possible to produce the clock commercially. We are working on a solution to bring such a clock to the market but do not expect a solution in the nearest-nearest future.”

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White walls can be a boring waste of space during the day, dull and dark by night . Why not add some color and life, use them to project your schedule, adjust your social calender, view the weather and tell time on demand? This clever little all-in-one gadget proposes to do all of the above, and perhaps even more.

Yonggu Do, Dohyung Kim & Sewon Oh fashioned the device as a simple circular attachment – an unobtrusive, wall-mounted object that is activated by touch or via remote connection. Bluetooth, WIFI, and more – these days, all easy add-ons. A music player (with laser-light display of what you are listening to) would not be difficult either.

A series of lasers project digital information onto the flat surface surrounding the sundial, using familiar frames of reference for things like numerals one expects to see at a certain angle from center (making it easier to read from a distance, knowing the positions of hours and minutes and the relative size of the hands).

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Digital clocks have come so far – great features, bright easy-to-read numerals and multi-functional alarms … but on many, switching to or from daylight savings time still involves buttons, adjustments and double-checks.

Not so with this super-simple design solution: just tilt the table clock from one small flat side to the other and be done with it. For one half of the year it leans left, and the other half it sits slightly to the right.

The resulting slightly-asymmetrical shape shows off its one core bit of creativity functionality, while otherwise-minimal white and black (alternately used for the hands and ticks or background) make a subtle-but-stylish design statement.

But wait, you want a watch instead? Other designs by Denis Guidone are also fun, simple and abstract in various ways … include a watch that follows the same style and single-turn principle for moving forward or back by an hour.

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Sometimes you need more than one cutting surface, or one board is just too big to manage while another is too small to serve its purpose. Modeled after the classic peace symbol shape cut like pie-piece sections, this combination of cutting boards cleverly addresses such issues.

This design by David Weatherhead lets keep all of the parts together to use as a single board (and for flat-and-easy storage), but break them up as needed too in order to cut or serve food.

Clearly a fan of bold modern colors, perfect circles and other geometric shapes, his other designs follow similar principles of clear simplicity – these include decorative objects, office supplies, calendars, shelves and other useful wall-mounted accessories.

Of particular interest are Weatherhead’s simple yet supremely stylish time pieces, which come in all shapes, colors and varieties, from cuckoo clocks and wall clocks to unusual finds like “toymaker’s clocks,” which are small and rectangular. In fact, if you’re ever searching for just the right clock for a modern space, you’d do well to search among his creations for inspiration.

About the designer:

“David Weatherhead provides Creative Direction & Product Design for brands including MADE.com. Graduating from the Royal College of Art’s Design Products course in 2007, David designs clocks, stationery and home accessories; providing Creative Direction, Strategic Design, Product Design, Package Design, and Design for Manufacture.”

“David’s broader experience spans Homewares, Product, Packaging, Signage & Wayfinding for brands including, Anthropologie, Arco, BlackBerry, ByShop, Conran, Ettinger, Heal’s, Liberty, Museo Nacional Del Prado, Teroforma, The Design Museum, Prada, On&On, Sainsbury’s, Seletti, Wagamama and The Dorchester Collection. He has featured in Elle Decoration, The FT, The Guardian, LSN:Global, and Wallpaper*magazine.”

“David is Course Director at Kingston School of Art, MA Product & Furniture Design, Visiting Lecturer at The Royal College of Art, Krabbesholm Højskole (Denmark), and Cambridge School of Visual & Performing Arts (CSVPA).”

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