I’m making a watchface (Ahead Of Time) that I want to have a very legible time display. I want to be able to glance down at my watch when the backlight is off and be able to see the time very easily.
I realized that I can make the time display much bigger when the time is 9:59 versus 10:00 because there are fewer digits, and therefore more horizontal room per digit. The problem is that when the time ticks from 9:59 to 10:00, it would create discontinuity as the text display changes font size (and that would shift around other elements on the display, which are coordinated with the size of the time display). This is a bit wonky, so I was going to abandon the idea.
But then I realized that most of the time (75%—1-9 vs 10-12) it’s only 3 digits, so it seems like it makes more sense to reap the benefits of larger text during that larger window instead of worrying so much about the transitory and infrequent transition times.
How do other people deal with this tradeoff? Is it weird to have different text display sizes at different times of days?
My view is the 1 takes up little horizontal space, so not much would be gained by adjusting the font size for the 10-12 hours vs the 3 digit times if you use a proportional font which is my preference. But that works for my designs where the time is centered in its designated area, and may not for yours. With fixed-pitch fonts the space for the 1 is larger so could change the calibration.
Good point, I guess it also depends on how wide the 1 is—whether it’s just a vertical line or if it has ornamentations at top or bottom. Either way, there’s also the white space between the 1 and the adjacent digit, which can be as wide as the 1 itself.
I guess another related question is whether people recenter the time display when switching between 3 and 4 digits. There’s an appeal to having the colons fixed in the middle of the screen (like LCD watches of old), but I feel like it looks nice when it’s centered. How does anyone else deal with this?
I usually opt to center the time. TextLayers will do this automatically but if you’re trying to make the time big you might have to use bitmaps or Pebble FCTX to draw the text big enough.
My preference is for centering. That plus proportional spacing causes some position shifting at minute changes but that bothers me less than having the display offset most of the time and the irregular spacing between numbers.
Great idea in theory, but personally I find the size change a bit jarring – that moment when the font suddenly shifts at 10:00 feels more like a glitch than a feature, even if it only happens once a day.
Also worth considering: most people worldwide use 24h time, where you’d have 4 digits from 10:00 all the way to 23:59 – so the window for the larger font would be pretty short-lived anyway.
I’d go with one consistent size – keeps things clean and polished!
On my first attempt at a clear watchface I have the screen divided into 4 zones , one for each digit in 10:00AM but at something like 9:59 I have the “hour” zones become one zone, centre the digit and make its width 140% which may or may not work if you are using fonts !
I’m drawing the time using rectangles and it’s looking very basic at the moment but hopefully will become nicer given a couple of weeks !