Clock face reading guides and design stories

A selection of faces with reading guides or design stories. Browse all faces for the full collection.

Classic clocks

Gino Valle’s 1965 Cifra 3 is a classic example of a mechanical flip clock.

The Swiss railway station clock pairs high-contrast minute marks with a distinctive red second hand.

Four rows of lights add up to the hours and minutes.

A classic Nixie tube stacks electrodes shaped like digits inside glass.

Seven fixed strokes form each digit: 8 lights all seven; 1 lights the two on the right.

Each digit occupies a three-column, five-row dot grid.

The Chinese word face writes out the hours and minutes in Chinese, with an optional line for seconds.

Read each digit in its own column.

One hand turns once a day: midnight at the top, 06:00 right, noon below and 18:00 left.

The hour hand turns once a day; the minute and second hands keep their usual cycles.

Read the labeled hour, minute and second dials separately.

Read the clearest digit at the center of each window.

In Face settings, fix the minute hand and watch the scale turn beneath it.