Design your own watch face for Moto360

Continuing the Moto360 conversation….

It took about 2 minutes after receiving my Motorola Moto360 Smartwatch for me to be inspired to start designing my own watch faces.  The first thing I needed to learn was how to make your own designs.  I found the Android App WatchMaker was the most versatile, allowing the designer to create multiple layers, shapes, faces, watch hands and apply various actions to those objects such as rotation, transparency, skew, colours.  The watch’s sensor readings can adjust objects depending on variables – time, battery level, gyroscope, date, weather etc.  Many elements are included in WatchMaker, although  element can also be an imported image – including animated GIFs and transparent PNGs.

In my first design, I created a transparent red ring that hides a segment of the circle depending on the battery level of the watch.  The multiple circles image shades a percentage to a darker shade to display the phone’s battery level.   The second hand is a simple thin rectangle with only a small segment revealed that rotates with each passing second. The date is text field displaying the date in a custom configuration using WatchMaker’s shortcode LUA scripting language.  Behind the date is a black rectangle with a slight drop shadow to give the watch a feeling of depth.

WatchMaker has a public page on Google+ for designers to share their creations.

Note: The elegant hands were borrowed from watch designer “Carlos”.