by Dan Moren
Designing the Snoopy watchOS 10 face
GQ’s Robert Leedham talks to the teams at Apple and Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates about bringing Snoopy to life on watchOS 10. Most interesting to me was how the watch decides what animations to show:
That first meeting at the Charles M Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California, was the Watch team’s first in-person meet-up after the pandemic, and what started as a two-hour drive north from Mountain View ultimately ended with plans for 148 unique animations that would be contextual depending on the time of day, local weather and activities. When you go for a swim, Snoopy dons his scuba gear and floats through your watch screen. When night arrives he’ll howl at the moon, and when you’re not up to much at all you can find him draped over his iconic red doghouse in a series of panels that are a direct lift from the comics. It all amounts to over 12 minutes of animation work that stemmed from an unexpectedly chaotic tête-à-tête.
Unsurprisingly, it’s the attention to detail that wins out here. I love the decisions about what activities are particularly Snoopy-like and what kind of nose to use for the beagle, which has evolved over the years.
Personally, I’ve been using the Snoopy watchface pretty much full time since installing watchOS 10 back in June and I continue to see new animations. They are, to a one, delightful, and greatly improve my day—I also appreciate that even though the watch face doesn’t have any complications, watchOS 10’s new widget stack makes me feel okay about foregoing them. As I mentioned in my first look at watchOS 10, my mom had a Snoopy watch when I was growing up, and continues to give me a solid nostalgia hit.