Watch the Time

So I've been in the market for a new watch recently ... and I've been scouring a few different brands and styles. Mainly, I've been drawn to a round black face, steel or titanium link band, and a little bold flare to it.

But that's not the important part of today's post for you to ponder. Instead, it's this: go and search for some professional product photos of watches. And so far, I've noticed something.

Over 98% of the watches show the time as 10:08.

Go on, try it with any brand. Neat, huh? So why is that?? I suppose my first thought is that the hands of the clock make kind of a nice checkmark, which is probably a positive psychological shape and would somehow convince you that's the right watch to buy. I dunno. What do you think?

Ponder that. I'll be back in a few days to collect your papers.

5 comments:

hougee said...

interesting! this is what they say on wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10:08

umm...

Anonymous said...

I believe it's for aesthetic (I don't think I spelled that correctly) reasons.

It just looks nice.

Did you decide on a watch? There is nothing hotter than a guy with a nice watch :)

Kevin said...

I checked out Tag Heuer's site, and noticed their either between 10:08 - 10:10, or about 7:25pm. The way it looks to me is that this allows the watchmakers to show more of the face (without the hands covering extra dials or the brand mark).

Kevin said...

I left my comment before going to hougee's suggested wikipedia page, and it looks like I was mostly pretty dead on. Yay for me.

Ben said...

Hougee, that's really cool, the explanations.

Taj, how about a nice guy with a watch? I ended up going with this one.

I suppose some of the crazy chronograph-type watches would have to have the hands at different places, to not block all the little details.