DESIGNING TIME: HOW NOOKA CHANGED THE WAY WE SAW THE FUTURE

KICKSTARTER BOOK PROJECT LAUNCHING DECEMBER 2, 2022

"It is rare to work with a company that isn't driven by market or sales but by passion. It was a beautiful, inspiring, time-shaping culture with NOOKA. " —Karim Rashid, Industrial Design Legend

"THE FUTURE SHOULD NOT LOOK LIKE THE PAST." —Matthew Waldman, NOOKA creator

TOKYO, Nov. 30, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Designing Time: How NOOKA Changed The Way We Saw the Future (www.kickstarter.com/projects/sanq/designing-timenooka-future) is being produced by SAN-Q LLC, a Tokyo-based design lab. 

In the 1990s, designer Matthew Waldman, an early innovator in interface design, challenged how we told time. "Learning how to read 'time' is not intuitive for children, which presents an opportunity to view it in a new way." He created the manifesto that would become NOOKA, and presaged wearable and fashion tech long before Apple. "NOOKA was my attempt to communicate without words, transcending geopolitical and cultural borders using design as a problem-solving tool. Innovation should create new ideas, and aim to grow a better society."

What started as an exploration of what was possible, became a hot, young lifestyle brand. "NOOKA was a sexy vision of a techno future, which was a new idea at the time," says Matthew. "The first techno progressivist lifestyle brand. The fact that it was commercially viable wasn't the goal, but certainly validated that there was a need, a desire." However, Matthew would learn that keeping a business afloat, no matter how beloved the brand, was another matter altogether.

With an introduction by Paola Antonelli of the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, Designing Time: How NOOKA Changed The Way We Saw the Future, is the full story of Matthew Waldman's futurist design brand: the birth and evolution of the brand and its design philosophy, the products and ideas it championed, the audiences it touched—and the impact it had on the fashion aesthetic of the 2000s. 

Launching on Kickstarter on December 2, 2022 with a campaign running 45 days, this book features 200 pages of original sketches, renders, photos, and process images of unrealized projects—with powerful insights into American entrepreneurship: the myth that it is a democratic institution, and the importance of innovation in the face of stymieing commercialism. In today's market of fast fashion and copycat tech products, NOOKA's message of technoprogressive optimism for the future is more relevant than ever, and this book will inspire people to push for truly new ideas and innovation.

ABOUT THE KICKSTARTER PROJECT: LAUNCHING DECEMBER 2, 2022

SAN-Q's goal, with the help of a Kickstarter Japan, is to produce a 200-page book (A4; hard and soft cover) printed at a cutting-edge facility in Japan using eco-friendly inks and paper. (Specific paper and ink choices to be announced closer to production as they are subject to final quantities.)

The book campaign will be live on Kickstarter for 45 days and is available for purchase starting DECEMBER 2, 2022 at: www.kickstarter.com/projects/sanq/designing-timenooka-future

Pledges will help pay for researchers, editors, interviewers, and resources needed to tell this story in its entirety, as well as for the quality printing materials this book deserves.

ABOUT NOOKA

Originally produced under license by Seiko of Japan, production under the brand name NOOKA Inc. began in 2004 with an auspicious launch at MoMA design stores in NYC and Tokyo. With a philosophy of true innovation (NOOKAFESTO), the brand quickly expanded their range of other physical expressions of their mission, creating a MINDSTYLE™ brand with additional innovative accessories such as a revolutionary belt called the STRIP, much imitated sunglasses embraced by celebrities like the late artist PRINCE, and a unique fragrance. NOOKA launched many successful collabs with brands that included FILA, Hello Kitty, and the then new Fear of God.

ABOUT MATTHEW WALDMAN, NOOKA CREATOR

Designer, inventor, and educator, Matthew Waldman is best known as the founder of NOOKA, the lifestyle design brand that brought the revolution of interface design to physical products, creating unique timepieces that reinterpreted how time was told. Before NOOKA, Matthew gained recognition as a pioneer in digital interactive and UX design, founding New York Zoom in 1997, then building an award-winning global team at Reuters in 2002. Currently, with his interactive design studios, he creates narrative-driven design for brands. As a professor at Keio University Graduate School of Media Design in Tokyo (KMD), one of the top schools of innovative design, Matthew now turns his focus to circular design, and expanding the designer toolkit towards material science and biodesign.

KICKSTARTER PROJECT: www.kickstarter.com/projects/sanq/designing-timenooka-future

PROMOTION IMAGES: bit.ly/3VlFuu7

VISIT NOOKA: https://www.nooka.com/nooka-book/

INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/nooka_global

TWITTER: www.twitter.com/nooka

SOURCE SAN-Q