The orange dot

Ludwig Oechslin has succeeded in dotting the i! Alongside the display of time in hours and minutes, he is particularly fascinated by the possibilities that other time horizons offer.

ochs und junior ‘time horizon pieces’ have a lot in common with each other, one of which is the display of a particular time span. The dial of the anno cinquanta, for instance, contains 50 apertures arranged as three rings, each one of which features an orange-colored dot traveling from aperture to aperture to indicate the date, the month and the day of the week.

The format of this calendar display, which has the time horizon of one year, is digital in nature (because it involves discrete steps) but is read in an analogue manner (because it involves taking in the positions of the three dots). This, of course, is a novel approach: conventional calendars require alphanumeric characters to get the information across. Oechslin dispenses with these, creating instead an intuitive system that imbues the dial with a uniqueness all its own.

Our settimana junior also boasts this orange dot! Here, it travels around a semicircular register of seven apertures to display the weekday. This design was specially created by Ludwig for the young person’s watch: it finds him aligning the apertures with the hours 1-7, a method that immediately becomes to clear to young owners well versed in intuitive play…

You’ll always find the orange dot accompanying our ochs und junior stories and indicating a time horizon in our wristwatches  –  now and into the future…

Then again, those orange dots might simply be marbles…