Time Smiles
A clock that tells the time with a face instead of numbers, and smiles at you every hour.
- Year
- 2019
- Role
- Founder, design & engineering
- Client
- New Things Lab
- Outcome
- iF Design Award 2025
- 50
- clocks in the first batch
- 1 month
- to sell out, without paid ads
- iF 2025
- Design Award
Time feels ever more stressful, so I wondered: what if a clock could make you smile instead? Time Smiles reads like a face. The big eye shows the hours, the small eye shows the minutes, and the smile moves along with them. Every hour, it smiles at you in a slightly different way.
Printing, cutting, trying again
The first CAD model dates from June 2019. Over the next months the body went through more than a dozen 3D-printed versions, and the thin face parts were laser-cut from acrylic. Inside is a standard quartz movement, with two lightweight disks, one white and one transparent, press-fitted onto its hands. The design is all about clever material use: round and minimal, a humble object that fits in almost anywhere in a home.
Fifty clocks
The first prototype went to my grandfather Rients, who was 89 at the time. Family and friends followed. They loved it, so I made a numbered, limited series of 50 clocks. It sold out within a month, without paid advertising. One of the first customers described it as “regaining a lighthearted relationship with time”, and I think that is beautiful. Time Smiles became the first product of my studio, New Things Lab.
The second edition, by hand
The clock you can buy today is a full redesign. The front is CNC-machined from FSC-certified bamboo, an ultra-silent sweep movement means there’s no ticking at all, and a solid steel back plate snaps on with magnets. We assembled the batch ourselves, in the studio.
An iF Design Award
In 2025, this edition won an iF Design Award. That autumn, the Dutch interior magazine Stijlvol Wonen featured it too.
There’s also See-Through Time: the same smiling face in a clear housing.
Coming to your wrist
The Time Smiles Watch, on pre-order for delivery in December 2026, brings the same face to a 38 mm stainless steel case, with sapphire crystal and a Ronda 763 quartz movement (Swiss Parts version).
Design protection
The clock is protected by EU registered design 015085774-0001, and the Time Smiles Watch by international registration DM/259780.