Well, it's almost a first: an industrial designer is poised to redefine product design by using a crowdfunding platform to launch his killer timepiece-inspired accessory for an iPod Nano.
The twist? It doesn't go on your wrist—it goes in your pocket. Obsolescence aside, the wrist is (or was) just one of at least two appropriate locations for a personal chronometer, and Melbourne-based designer Edwin Conan prefers the nostalgic appeal of the original place: in the pocket.I have been wearing this very pocket watch everyday. Every time I pull it out to check time, it feels like I've actually traveled back in time and the world become black and white. It feels, special.
The iPocketWatch is a time instrument; it is also a time machine. And here I am, sincerely inviting you to share this unique feeling with me. With your support, not only can we make this iPW a reality, but we may also, and this is just a hope, bring the idea of the pocket watch back to life.
Just a few months ago, we facetiously advised the TikTok to "move over" for one of many new contenders in the iPod accessory space. Considering that the ODDIO1 was not successfully funded—it garnered just a third of its $45K goal—perhaps the iPod accessory market is a zero-sum game after all. (Granted, Jeremy Saxton and Jacob Hall raised the not-insubstantial sum of nearly $15,000, which happens to be exactly how much Scott Wilson was seeking in the initial offering of the TikTok and LunaTik. The rest, of course, is history.)
In some ways, the affinity between Scott Wilson's lightning-in-a-bottle product and Conan's iPocketWatch is largely superficial: it's easy to assume that the latter is simply following in the footsteps of the former, but it's worth noting that the wristwatch dethroned the pocketwatch as the timepiece-of-choice: "...pocket watches began to be superseded by wristwatches around the time of World War I, when officers in the field began to appreciate that a watch worn on the wrist was more easily accessed than one kept in a pocket." (via Wikipedia of course, which also notes that "up until about the turn of the 20th century, though, the pocket watch was predominant and the wristwatch was considered feminine and unmanly.")
Thus, Conan is competing not against the TikTok and LunaTik but the common enemy of watches everywhere: the mobile phone (and its virtual accouterments). In this sense, design has come full circle with the iPocketWatch, which combines old and new in a way that is both old and, well, new—in fact, I imagine it's easier to keep the iPod Nano in one's pocket as opposed to his or her wrist when he or she is actually using it for its intended purpose: to listen to music.
Which is a very long way of saying: haters gonna hate, but maybe Conan is onto something with his elegantly-machined take on a modern pocketwatch. Now if someone would design a three-piece suit that's been embedded with LEDs or a shapeshifting frame to match...
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