Watch Face Designer Interview: TIKTOK

TIKTOK is one of these designers that joined the Facer platform in its early days and almost immediately blew our minds with his clever use of simple math to create amazing watch faces. These early creations were just a warm-up for TIKTOK who went on to create HUD, one of the winners of the Samsung/aBlogtoWatch contest. We’re excited to feature TIKTOK’s interview today and learn more about this designer out of London.

Hey TIKTOK! Could you tell us a bit about yourself?

Hello Facer my name is Jack (aka TIKTOK), I am a 33 year old living in London. By day I work as a Freelance Creative Designer/Visualiser for my own company Urban Ape, by night I am a Dad to my little 2 year old boy Zac. What do I do for fun, well these days thats trying to entertain the little monster (Zac) but when I can I love to travel the world. Back in the day it used to be, throw a back pack on, book some flights and see what happens when we are there but these days it takes a little more prep, who knew kids needed so much stuff.

How did you get started with watch face design?

Back in late 2016 my brother Josh who is a developer showed me his secondhand Samsung Gear s2 he had just bought and had started developing/testing apps for. We formed TIKTOK in the hope to start making our own unique apps but having the free time to collaborate just didn’t seem to happen and this is when I stumbled across Facer. As a creative and not a coder this was an ideal platform for me to play around with and with some basic codes learnt from the Facer community I was able to start to bring my ideas to life. Once I had released my first design and saw how easy it was to use, I got the bug and went on to design another 15 or so in quick succession, and finally became a Premium designer. But then due to work commitments and also my son monopolizing any free time I dropped off the scene for almost a year, until last month when I saw my old S3 stuffed away in the draw, I thought its time to reignite the love for watch face design.

What is your watch face design process like?

Well it has changed as time has gone by. In the first instance it was a case of testing the lines of code I could get my hands on and then with that limited info seeing whats the most creative I can be with it. Like my first face, this was just one technique of an object moving back and forth but used in a creative way you can achieve surprising results. This is how I have always tackled design, you don’t need to know everything you just need to know how to work with the knowledge you have. But now I have a better understanding of different techniques this opens things up, I can plan better from the beginning. I always start in either Illustrator or Photoshop, lay out the face first then bring all the elements into Facer and try and work out how to animate them. My new approach is to create collections rather than one offs, so watch this space as I am knee deep in designing my next collection as I write this.

Which watch face are you the proudest of? Why?

Hmm, well it should be the original HUD face as this brought me some early success when I was a finalist in the Facer competition but in truth I’d have to say my very first face PONG. This is what started the love for designing faces and with just one line of code showed me what could be achieved.

Any other watch face designers do you love on Facer?

I’d have to say for his knowledge of Facer coding then Mellin, if you participate on the facer community you will notice he is the go to guy with answers to your questions.

Actual faces, there are so many out there its hard to have a top few as this changes daily but the latest that have caught my attention for one reason or another are:

‘Get to the Chopper’ by Proteus 9

‘Verbose Mode V2’ by Vincent, he has some really nice designs

‘MS-DOS Face v1.1’

There are so many more to add but I would be here all day

Where do you see watch faces in the next few years?

Interesting question. I think there will be improvements into the functionality of the faces and integration of more animation, but fundamentally a face still has to serve the purpose of telling the time. Believe it or not I don’t actually wear a smart watch, I still love an analogue timepiece (I know I shouldn’t be saying that) thats why I never try to recreate existing analogue time pieces as they will never be as good as the real thing. I think with a smart watch it provides a new medium to show the time so rather than recreating the old, lets push it and see what new ways we can come up with.

Any tips for aspiring watch face designers?

Start basic, learn maybe just one technique and see how creative you can be with that technique. Use it in different ways and you’d be surprised what can be achieved from just being able to move an object back and forth. Also use sites like tinyPNG to optimise all of your files as this will help the performance of your face. Lastly if you get stuck on anything just post a comment on the community, they are a very helpful and knowledgeable bunch and really helped me out when I was stuck.

Anything else you’d like to add?

I’d like to say a big thank you to anyone who has downloaded my faces and also thanks for the positive feedback. Keep up the good work Facer team and keep on Facing everyone!

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☞ Interested in joining Facer and start creating your own watch faces? Go to www.facer.io