Meet the highly imaginative, conceptually driven calendar created by London designer Oscar Diaz. It uses the capillary action of ink spreading across paper to print the current date.
“The ink is absorbed slowly, and the numbers in the calendar are “printed” daily. One a day, they are filled with ink until the end of the month. A calendar self-updated, which enhances the perception of time passing and not only signaling it. The ink colors are based on a spectrum, which relate to a “color temperature scale”, each month having a color related to our perception of the weather that month. The colors range from dark blue in December to three shades of green in spring or oranges, red in the summer.”
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>> Found via Minimalismi + Dezeen
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I found the lively (aka somewhat ridiculous and heckling) comments on Dezeen to be quite entertaining as folks debated whether this thing actually worked, some poking away at Oscar and his design. I found Oscar’s response re: the plausability and functionality of his calendar to be quite interesting. Take a read:
Hello, since people seem very curious about how it works, I will explain a bit more in detail;
I was inspired by the the capillary action (which is how water moves through plants and trees), and by looking how some people partially dip sugar cubes in their coffee, and wait for the coffee to rise up to their fingers, before dropping the cube in the cup.
The paper is a very very special paper, which is made so the fibers create regular cells. This means that the ink will pass from one cell to the other in a timely manner. Is an expensive paper, but with incredible properties, all thanks to recent developments in the paper manufacturing process.
I put double numbers (apart from the first one) so the surface to fill up is pretty much the same. The ink doesn’t dry because has been modified. There are many types of inks and most contain a shellac to make the ink more shiny, but that makes it dry faster too.
Each number works also as an ink tank, which means that each number is fed by the previous number and not by the ink bottle, and if you remove the bottle, the ink will continue to move forward for a couple of days until it slowly stops. That is how ink can get to the end.
Hope this answers some of the questions. Thanks for reading.
Oscar
So there you have it.
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Ink Calendar is shown as part of SUEÑOS DE UN GRIFO.
Diseño con alma de agua at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid.
Curated by Hector Serrano and Javier Esteban, the exhibition explore the role that objects may have in our dialogue with water from different points of view.
On view until October 11, 2009, the exhibition has been organized by ddi (Sociedad Estatal para el Desarrollo del Diseño y la Innovación and Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, where is being held.
When: 17 July – 11 October 2009
Where: Sala Juana Mordó, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid (Spain)
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>> Oscar-Diaz.net
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