Time of Day

From dawn till dust, from coffee to catching a plane, we exploring the best time of day to do what needs doing.
Client

BBC Future

A blue illustrated banner filled with simple line illustrations of parts of life. The image is split in half vertically, the left is darker and represents night time, the right is lighter to represent the day. The left includes a dark street, a crescent moon and owls. The right looks like a park with trees, deer and people socialising.

BBC Future challenged us to create an interactive piece with the theme: ‘the best time to do anything in 24 hours’.

Our challenge was finding a timezone-traversing story for a global audience. What data would be universally interesting? And what about people getting up and going to bed at different times? Being on different schedules?

So we asked two questions – what time do you get up, and what time do you go to bed? Armed with this info, we gave users a day’s worth of data based on their specific routines.

We also broke the data into two chunks – data that was dependent on your waking time, and data that wasn’t.

For example, the universally best time to fly is between 6am and 10am but the best time to have your coffee is always 2 hours after you wake up, whether that’s a 7am rise or a 10pm night shift.

We also dotted famous faces across the 24 hour timeline, like notorious short-sleeper Mozart’s 1am bedtime and daily napper Winston Churchill.

The design transitioned from soothing daytime blues to deep midnight navy. Bright yellow highlighted stories on the page, while animated touches, like twinkling stars offered an extra touch of depth.

A simple GIF of a two dimensional street. A car and pedal bike drive along the road and a plan passes over head from left to right in a loop..
Am image of three questions about timings throughout the day with toggle switches next to each one. From left to right they read: 'Light makes you lighter?', '7am and Tooth-Hurty?' and 'Is Birth more Bearable at Breakfast-time?'
Three screenshots of different parts of the Time of Day website. Each include blue illustrations and fact boxes about the best time to fly, drink coffee or visit the supermarket.
A fact box taken from the Time of Day website. Titled 'Churchill Napped' it explains how Winston Churchill used siesta's to 'work 1.5 days in every 24 hours'.
A fact box from Time of Day. It read's '2:30. Pablo Picasso. Painter. Sculptor. Ceramicist. A father of modern art. Night owl.''
A screenshot of the full vertical span of the Time of Day website and illustrations. The top half is light blue representing the day. The lower half is a dark blue representing the evening/night.

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