Barneys Coop has teamed up with Watch makers Timex and tattoo artist, toy maker, book publisher, Joseph Aloi aka. JK5 for this limited edition watch. Green Label Art had a chance to interview this artist about the watch itself.

What were the challenges inherent in cultivating a design for as specific a canvas as a watch?

The challenge for me was to come up with an interesting, distinctive, and beautiful design for the very small, octagonal face. The shape and form was conducive to a symmetrical design with fluid linework that would just glow with the color choices. The top horizontally reads, “JK5″ and “Barneys,” and the sides which I turned and treated horizontally as well read, “Illuminate,” and the numbers one to nine. On the bottom it says, “Love, Light, Create.” The words that had a function on the watch [like “stop” and “reset”] needed to remain so those got contrasting glyph-like type treatments.

How was the collaborative process and would you work with them again?

They were awesome folks to work with. I had a great dialogue with the Barneys and Timex team about the potential to create and design the anatomy of a watch—actually play with the technology. I liked the idea of seeing my sanskrit/elvish/cholo/sci-fi fonts as the digital time display but I really want to create a new watch form and concept from scratch. Thinking about time as a beating heart.

Wow. That’s near impossible for me to envision how far that could go.

They’re open to collaborate further so we shall see.

OK, being familiar with your process I know you always have this incredibly developed, baroque detailed narrative, a complete backstory for each design. What’s up with this watch?

This ancient traveling scribe of the buddha journeyed to a distant, most conscious, visually lyrical planet of the imagined subconscious future, and returns with this relic of a glowing timepiece. It was selected out of three. Encrypted are the messages “Illuminate time through love, light, and creation.” It is always that time.