Assignment

Timekeeper design analysis. Find a timekeeper of interest to you, and carefully analyze how it presents the time. If a watch or clock, consider specific details of the typography, indices, proportions, and materials. Are there complications?

Baby-G + Plus in charm holder container

What I Did

I decided to analyze the Baby-G + PLUS ( BGD10K-6) watch from Casio. This is the first watch that I can remember ever wanting as a kid or thinking that it was really cool and turns out I still think it’s very cool. I looked up the current offerings from Casio in Baby-G’s and picked my favorite one to analyze for the exercise. From the Casio Product Page:

Mix, match, make it your own! A brand-new BABY-G + PLUS series to celebrate the 30th anniversary of BABY-G in 2024.”

Happy 30th birthday Baby-G!

The BGD10K is a digital watch that comes with a holder or can be worn as a wristwatch. I really like this as I already use a smartwatch and bracelets etc and it would be fun to have more keychain charms like my sundial. Also it reminds me of a tamagotchi design when worn as a charm (fitting in with the 90s/Y2K aesthetic. This ad from Casio shows the Baby-G styled throughout the years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djS_VEV67mA&embeds_referring_euri=https://www.casio.com/&embeds_referring_origin=https://www.casio.com&source_ve_path=MTY0NTA2LDA

Watch Face

Baby-G + PLUS (BGD10K-6) from Casio in a light purple with a pink carrying case

• I noticed the biggest text on the screen is the hour and minute which are also positioned at the bottom center and the seconds are also shown next to it but in a slightly smaller font. I find this readability to be nice.
• AM/PM; The AM/ PM text is on the top upper left which for some reason feels really off to me and I think I’d prefer it to be on the right and switch places with the date. I think I understand though why the date is positioned on the right hand side so that it can be under the text of the day which is the second largest space on the face watch.
• The current day of the week is displayed capitalized using 3 letter abbreviations in the upper right hand corner. This is also the spot on the watch that cycles through retro pixel animations. This decision makes sense to me as it’s something that changes daily and is frequently referenced but isn’t needed to be seen all the time.
  • I really like the pixel animations, which the website describes as “cute and retro” and I have to agree! The different animations included are of a dog, cat I tried guess the other 3 without looking it up just from the stills and I’m going to say pufferfish, turtle, and dancer and double check if that’s correct or not 😂

    • Update 9/25/24:

      

      Pixel animations included on the Baby-G plus

      • Okay, I was surprisingly not far off and the pixel animations are a: surfer, dancer, dolphin, blowfish, dog, cat
      • Well then I had to look up the difference between a blowfish and a pufferfish and it’s a rabbit hole for another day but this reddit post relating it back to Animal Crossing helped me out

Typography

• Matching the animations the text is also mostly a pixel style and all capitalized. Beyond the screen on the outside reads “PROTECTION” at the top and “BABY-G” at the bottom. Considering the Baby-G came out as a part of the G-Shock brand, it mades sense to me that protection would be a feature to prominently feature even if this version of the Baby-G is definitely more compact and less industrial looking than others like the BA110YK-2A where the text is reversed

  

  BA110YK-2A with a more protective shell and busier watchface.

Button Operations

I first noticed the four buttons on the side with arrows pointing on the inside border of the watch face saying what they control. I found a great interactive guide of what each button does on casio’s operation guide for the model in the HTML Version. From there I found the following out about each button and it’s controls (starting at the upper left corner and going clock-wise)

General Guide button guide from Operation Guide for Baby-G Plus Watch from Casio