On Time presents items from the Design Collection of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich that speak to a hot-button issue in society today: time as a luxury and the tools associated with it. The many devices that discipline our dealings with time display a surprising formal and functional diversity - they range from a wristwatch to GPS, from a printed train schedule to a mobile phone, from birth control pills to the family planner, from the digital cuckoo clock to the Palm Pilot. In the tradition-conscious industry of time-telling devices, the debate on timeless design versus up-to-the-minute style arrived comparatively late - but wielded a major impact. The book interweaves image and text to create a reference guide to the design history of time measurement that is both informative and entertaining. In contrast to other sector-specific collection catalogues and chronicles, the emphasis here is on design at the crossroads between creativity, invention, production and the market.
With texts by Timm Delfs and Norbert Wild.