2009.08 Light

Date Bag

A bag that displays the date in digital numbers.
Old film cameras used to have a “date” function —
the one that stamps an orange date in the corner of the photo.
Digital cameras sometimes have it too, but it's rarely used.

That's because photo files can already carry their own timestamp data.
But a photo with a date stamped on it has a certain homey warmth, a nostalgia,
a slightly clumsy charm that's actually quite nice.
A private, personal kind of feeling, you could say…

A photo with an orange date stamped in the corner — This is the kind of image it makes

So we made this: the “Date Bag.”
Inside the translucent bag, today's date glows.
Carry it into a photo, and the date gets added to the picture.
Works whether you shoot on film, a digital camera, or a phone camera.
It's high-performance.

Carrying the bag next to a printer — This is how you use it

Carrying the bag in front of a photo shop

Materials: translucent bag, 7-segment display

This work's making-of process is also recorded in the original blog post: Read the original post →