News

Introducing Our St. Patrick’s Day Gnomeware Collection

Posted on by Plaid, Inc. • Boring Oregon
Collection of 12 St Patricks Day Gnome mugs as shown on Shopify

AUGUST 2024 UPDATE: These mugs are no longer available.

Hello, fellow gnomeware enthusiasts! We’re thrilled to announce the grand opening of our online merchandise store, where you can now shop for our delightful St. Patrick’s Day-themed mugs and more. Welcome to store.plaidapps.com, your one-stop destination for all things gnomeware, hosted by Shopify.

At Plaid Apps, we’re passionate about bringing a touch of whimsy and joy to your everyday life. That’s why we’re proud to introduce our newest collection of mugs, featuring hand-drawn St. Patrick’s Day gnomes that are sure to add a splash of Irish charm to your kitchen or office. Sip your morning coffee in style with our Cillian the Red mug, or enjoy a cozy night in with our Lucky the Elder design.

But that’s not all – we’re committed to expanding our gnomeware collection to include a variety of drinkware options, such as pint glasses, to suit every occasion. Whether you’re celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, Christmas, Easter, Pride, Thanksgiving, Valentines Day, or any other holiday, we’ll have you covered with our unique and whimsical designs.

Our gnomes may look familiar to fans of our Clockinator, Christmas Clockinator, and Halloween Clockinator iPhon/iPad Apps. We’re excited to bring these beloved characters to life in a whole new way, creating a cohesive collection of gnomeware that you can enjoy year-round.

So why wait? Head over to store.plaidapps.com today and browse our selection of St. Patrick’s Day mugs and more. And be sure to keep an eye out for future releases, as we continue to add new designs and products to our ever-growing gnomeware collection. Happy shopping, and may the luck of the Irish be with you! 🌈🍻

Christmas Clockinator

Posted on by Plaid, Inc. • Boring Oregon

Christmas

Christmas Clockinator is now available in the iOS App Store!

A 2 digit from each clock face

  • Candy Cane – in four different flavors
  • Holiday Cookies
  • Gingerbread Folks
  • Carol of the Gnomes
  • Happy Christmas
  • Holly Branches
  • The Twelve Days of Christmas
  • Crushed Velvet
  • Christmas Trees
  • Wrapping Paper

Our independent artists have, again, been hard at work, along with some specific artificial intelligence. We hope telling the time is as joyous for you as making it was for us.

Gnomes in front of their workshop

With Christmas, we’re introducing the Countdown Widget. It’s available in a numbers of sizes and styles, all ready to let you know how many shopping days you have left before the big day right on your Home Screen!

Count Down to Christmas Widget comes in many styles

The first 20 people to respond from this webpage will receive a code to download Christmas Clockinator for free. Just complete this form (your email will not be shared with anyone and will not be used for anything other than delivering the promo code).

Halloween Clockinator

Posted on by Plaid, Inc. • Boring Oregon

The goblins here at Plaid have been hard at work, getting ready for Halloween, and the results are almost here!

The CreatureNightmare ClockJack Halloween Clock Face

We plan to launch the Halloween Clockinator on October 1. It includes 8 brand new spooky faces and 1 old favorite from the original Clockinator:

The Digits 2 from Halloween Clockinator

  • Jack
  • Día de los Muertos
  • Hands
  • Bones
  • Bats
  • The Creature
  • Thicker than Water
  • Nightmare
  • Tombstones

They have all been created using our clutch of independent artists, along with some specific artificial intelligence. We hope you have as much fun telling the time as we did making it.

Running Skeletons

Don’t let an angry mob with torches and pitchforks catch you unprepared! Run, don’t walk, and put Halloween Clockinator on your iPad stood in the corner, decorate the house, and throw a party. It’s Halloween, y’all.

Angry Mob with Pitchforks and Torches

Clockinator v1.8 Is Here!

Posted on by Plaid, Inc. • Boring Oregon

Wow, did February come and go that fast or what? It’s like it was only 28 days long or something.

Here at Plaid we never slowed down even for an instant. Did you know there’s a museum dedicated to Bigfoot in our hometown of Boring? But this is about v1.8. I’ve said too much.

Clockinator v1.8 now has 24 different clock faces, with hundreds of combinations, developed by independent artists from all over the place. The newest faces include dancing clowns in Clown Gymnastics, black and white story telling that is anything but plain in Starlight Fairytale, a trip to the outer limits in our new Space clock face, and we’ve ripped the wallper right off the walls over at gramma’s house in Over the River.

4 Clockinator Faces Released in version 1.8

Clown Gymnastics Clock Face Starlight Fairytale Clock Face Space Clock Face Over the River Clock Face

v1.8 ships worldwide on March 8, 2022. So sit back, enjoy watching the time pass. I can’t wait to show you what we have in store for v1.9 and beyond…

App of the Month Club

Posted on by Plaid, Inc. • Boring Oregon

Clockinator was named the “App of the Month” by @appledevs_lab!

@appledevs_lab App of the Month for February '22

We’d like to thank our director, the independent artists who’ve created over 20 faces for the app, and our little dog for keeping us sane throughout the whole process of creating and maintaining this fancy clock. But most of all, we’d like to thank you, our fans, for downloading it and believing in us. Oh, and a big thanks to Apple Dev’s Lab for choosing us this month!

There’s still a lot more to come. We already have two new clock faces mostly developed and a third one well on it’s way. We will be updating again probably during the first couple of weeks of March. Spring, after all, is just around the corner.

Preview of Clown Gymnastics Clock Face
Preview of upcoming Clown Face

Anyway, today Clockinator is more famous than yesterday! If you haven’t checked it out yet, go get your copy!

Welcoming Winter

Posted on by Plaid, Inc. • Boring Oregon

Here in Boring, Oregon, it’s winter. And what better way to celebrate winter than to curl up in a blanket with a cup of cocoa and stare at a clock that features winter scenes?

Here comes Clockinator v. 1.7 with all the winter you can stand. Whether it’s Snow People in the shape of clock digits, or just finger writing in the snow, Clockinator has you covered. Throw in some dramatic winter scenery and you’ve just about got everything you need.

Four new clock faces are included in this update, more details about each one are available by tapping on the clocks below.

Thumbnail of Clockinator's Winter clock face showing 8:54amThumbnail of Clockinator's Snow People clock face showing 7:26Thumbnail of Clockinator's Henna clock face showing 5:30pmThumbnail of Clockinator's Snow Write clock face showing 2:20

These clock faces will help you smile through the sometimes-tough winter season. But not to worry, Spring is right around the corner…

Christmas has arrived on time

Posted on by Plaid, Inc. • Boring Oregon

Get it? It’s a clock app. “On time.”

Clockinator v. 1.5 is happy to roll out the Christmas faces we’ve designed for the 2021 season! Lots of edible candy, cookies, even gingerbread, are scattered about with a few sprinkles of Victorian era decorations and some oddly shaped Christmas Trees thrown in for good measure.

They say Variety is the Spice of Life, and I’m happy to say it’s certainly spicing up this season.

Spearmint ClockChristmas Tree ClockCandy Cane Clock Face

These clock faces make great additions to your holiday parties. We’ve seen iPads perched on refrigerators, walls, file cabinets and coffee tables making party-goers smile.

Clockinator 1.3

Posted on by Plaid, Inc. • Boring Oregon

Clockinator 1.3 includes 3 new faces, as well as some under-the-hood improvements.


Circus Clockface sample with Seconds Train Circus Clockface sample with Train
Circus has numbers designed and hand drawn by @hollowheadart. Reminiscent of what you might see at a circus, this festive face even has it’s own train!

12 different color palettes are available, choose your favorite from the settings at the bottom of the screen.


Dairysam Clockface
Dairysam is pure watercolor joy that hails from our neighbors to the north. Based in Toronto, @dairysam has provided Clockinator with some playful, and colorful, artwork. Color variations are chosen at random each time a digit changes.

A parade of characters, marches across the bottom of the screen when seconds are turned on. If you randomize them, you get a slight variation in colors, and an occasional procession of chickens!

More of their work can be seen at their website http://dairysam.wix.com/portfolio.


Halloween Hands Clock Face Halloween Hands Clock Face
Halloween Hands. You didn’t think we’d forget about Halloween did you? This update includes more monster fingers than you can count. Well, actually, you have to count them to tell the time. But it comes complete with spinning eyeballs and a trove of candy and Halloween icons across the bottom for counting seconds.

Designed by @hollowheadart in Portland, Oregon, a town nearby to Plaid’s hometown of Boring. More of @hollowheadart’s work can be seen at http://hollowheadstudio.com.

Other improvements include the consolidation of the rest of the faces. In previous versions you swiped through from one face to the next to see colors change. All of that is gone now and each Family of Faces can be swiped to exactly once with options in the settings at the bottom of the screen to choose color variations. A few other twists and turns have been added here and there as well. See what you can find!

Fun with Palettes

Posted on by Plaid, Inc. • Boring Oregon

With every new clock face comes a new palette. Today I spent most of the day finalizing a few palettes for the upcoming Circus face.

Palettes for the Circus numbers

I found a nice tool to help organize and output the colors I want to use. It’s called Pastel and is available on the macOS App Store. You can read more about it and what it does over there if you are interested in the tools.

After poking at it for a while and getting feedback from people all over the place, these palettes are the ones and the names I finally settled on. A few examples of the actual clock face rendered in the new palettes are shown below:

This is the Wallaby palette.

Circus Face, Wallaby setting

This is the Cowboy Boots palette.

Circus Face, Cowboy Boots setting

This is the Haunted Mansion palette.

Circus Face, Haunted Mansion setting

I expect the full Circus clock face to be released, along with a few seasonal goodies, around the beginning of October.

Clockinator 1.2

Posted on by Plaid, Inc. • Boring Oregon

Clockinator 1.2 includes a couple of new clock faces, as well as some under-the-hood improvements.

Subway Signs all blue clock face at 4:24Subway Signs multi colored at 3:15

Subway Signs has numbers that blend with the background in either dark mode or light mode. The time can be read with negative space included in each circle. This face also introduces a some new controls in the settings that can be tapped for different colors.

10 colors to choose from

10 basic colors are available, or you can let Clockinator show random combinations.

Cactus Hands clock face at 3:16

Cactus Hands Is a fun way to tell time by counting fingers, IF your fingers were made of cactus and were growing in pots!  It’s also a hint at some other things to come.

You can tell time by counting the fingers on each cactus. Of course, with only five fingers per hand, it can get a little tough to count to 8! So sometimes there will be two hands per digit.

Cactus Hands was created by @hollowheadart, more of his work can be seen at his website http://hollowheadstudio.com