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Braun ABW31 wall clock, as seen on the thinkmore WoF.

This is classic, classic industrial design – elements distilled down to their most essential, the materials appropriate, the markings meaningful and minimal, the controls accessible and logical. This deserves a place in every designer’s collection, and ought to be used more often as an example of what good design is all about. Clearly, this is not to say that there cannot be, or that there should not be, other approaches to design. There are rare instances when an idea has produced a physical manifestation that’s this close to being a perfect translation of the original idea, and that’s what makes this a classic.

There have been variants produced over the last 25 years – a silver, painted plastic version [buy only if nothing else is available], a version with a little digital insert [influenced by a Braun wristwatch], possibly others – but this is the version for the purist. The ABW31 is inexpensive to produce, and timepieces are perfectly valid even today. Braun no longer produces the wide variety of products that they once did, but if they were to reissue anything, may the corporate gods that govern them allow this to make the list.

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