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Futatoki the Learning Clock App shows an AM face and a PM face side by side. On screen, that had always made sense to me. What I kept wondering was what the same thing would look like on an actual wall.
Daiso had a square wall clock for ¥220, so I bought two.
One AM face, one PM face
One reads 1–12, the other reads 12 and 13–23. The run of colors is identical; only the numbers change. The clock faces I share let you pick which of the two you want, so I made both at the same size.
Outer size 14.8 cm, inner dial 117 mm. At that size the circle fits on a single A4 sheet, so you print it and cut it into two half-circles yourself.
I printed mine on photo paper, but photo prints come out a few millimeters off depending on the machine and its settings. If the size has to be right, printing an A4 PDF at actual size is the safer route.
Swapping, one half at a time
The front cover on these came off by hand from the back as well. The hands stay put; the halves slide in from the left and the right.
That half-finished state was my favorite thing to look at all day. On one single dial, the old clock and the afternoon sit next to each other.
Side by side
The picture the app draws when you press “split” was now sitting on the desk. So far, exactly as expected.
Except a real wall may be the wrong place for it
The longer I looked, the more I suspected this is something to do on a screen.
What tipped me off happened elsewhere. My child can read the clock on these color-coded faces. But on a visit to her grandparents, she looked up at the clock on their wall and said, “I can’t read it, it isn’t the Futatoki one.” She reads the app’s face fine, and an ordinary clock somewhere else stops her. I genuinely don’t yet know what the difference is.
Which makes me think the real clock on our own wall should look more like an ordinary clock, not less. Let the app do the side-by-side, and let the wall stay continuous with the clocks she’ll meet everywhere else.
And if you were going to pair two of them, plain-looking faces would probably beat color-coded ones. There’s a white-dial look called “monotone,” and set to monotone with slices and full detail it comes out looking very close to an ordinary clock. After writing this, I added it to the printable faces as well. The PM face works the same way, so that’s what I’d try if I paired two again.
I’m keeping both of them
The conclusion turned out to be a subtraction, but neither clock has gone anywhere. A clock with 13 next to the 12 and 18 at the bottom isn’t something you can just go out and buy.
The thinking behind showing AM and PM this way is written up in a separate article. The build using the larger ¥550, 25.4 cm clock instead of these square ones is here.
The clock faces are free
Both the AM face and the PM face come from the same page. Enter the outer size and bezel width of your clock and it generates the PDF on the spot. No sign-up, commercial use OK, no credit required.
See it on screen first
You can view the AM and PM faces side by side right in Futatoki the Learning Clock App, before printing anything. No install, no sign-up, free.