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As I write this piece, I find it fitting that Worn & Wound was co-founded by Zach Weiss, who, as many of you may know, happens to be an Industrial Designer too. There are dozens of us! DOZENS!
When it comes to Industrial Design and the watches we love, it’s hard to separate the two, especially in the modern day. For this argument, let’s assume “modern day” refers to everything after 1972, when Gerald Genta changed the watch landscape forever with the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak. Not only did this release change the landscape for folks within the watch industry, but it caught the eye of Industrial Designers who were green in their careers at the time, which later created a snowball effect of designing outside the box when it comes to watches. No longer were we restricted to the round case and the simple forms of previous years. Yes, there were unique watches before this period, but with the progression of design aesthetics and newer advanced manufacturing methods, this was the jumping-off point for wild designs and new methods of manufacture.
Marc Newson, the world-renowned industrial designer, is one of those who likely caught the curiosity bug of watches at the right time (pun fully intended). This is purely speculation on my part, but there is some evidence for my madness here, so bear with me. He would have been 9 years old when the Royal Oak was introduced, and years later, when adolescent youth and creativity were at a high for him during his university years, I like to think he was aware of watches and their importance as objects that held personal value and functional necessity.
Let’s remember, at this moment in time, the dinosaurs were long gone, but that thing called an iPhone was not even a close reality yet. Like the movie Inception, we were caught in limbo, and maybe that’s why they called it the Quartz Crisis? I digress.
Why so much chatter about Marc Newson? Well, as THE Industrial Designer’s Industrial Designer, he is my Jean-Claude Biver. He’s a person who shaped a lot of things that drove my love for design, objects, and understanding why we love the things we do. Newson was the design mind behind Ikepod and their audacious, bold looks on a wrist. It’s no coincidence that the Apple Watch strap, and even the case and crown design, have a lot of Ikepod DNA in them, because Newson and Jony Ive partnered on some of the early Apple Watch concepts and forms that became the juggernaut we know today.
This all comes around to the fact that a lot of watches, and many that are quite unique, come from a point of view that is not about “watchmaking” but more about aesthetics, joy, and simple function—and dare we say important accessories of fashion! Those aesthetics can be extremely broad, from the wild Oakley watches to the extremely stripped-back and minimal Junghans Max Bill models of the Bauhaus era. Designers have a way of finding and striking a chord with just the right audience at exactly the right time.
Way back when watchmaking started, it was out of necessity, and every detail was born from pure function and need. The book (with the world’s longest title) Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time is a look into the discovery of the original chronometer invented by John Harrison, as part of a competition to solve the longitude problem, and prevent sailors from getting lost at sea. Now that is a problem that actually needed to be solved. Just ask John Blackthorne and his crew in “Shōgun”; he can attest to that in the very first episode of the hit show on Hulu. Having a date window at 4:30? That created a problem rather than fixed one. Should we talk about cyclopes next?
No, that’s not why we are here.
We are here because industrial design has shaped a lot of what you see, use, and interact with on a daily basis; this very much includes watches. Now, I am not saying that industrial designers are kings of design—not at all. I am merely painting a picture of a path taken in watches simply because an industrial designer took us down that road. The following brands are not ones you may immediately think of when you think of watches, but they have all had their place in the community, their own niche corner. Brands like Nike, Oakley, Braun, Issey Miyake, and many more have this distinction.
Oakley is an amazing brand with a strong heritage in its own right, and a strong aesthetic that is unmatched in originality. However, it ain’t for everyone, and that is okay. In fact, it ain’t for me, as I don’t own any Oakley watches, but I sure as heck enjoy looking at them and being in awe of the folks that sketched them and produced them. Just look up Peter Yee’s sketches and you will be in awe at how he brought some of them to life.
The same goes for Nike, but contrary to Oakley, I do own many Nike watches, and absolutely love their approach to watches for the athlete. Years ago I had the pleasure of working with Scott Wilson of MNML design in Chicago; as industrial designers go, he’s up there with the best, and some of his best work came when he was at Nike designing the Nike Presto watches that came in a box that could be turned into a small planter, or working on the amazing Nike Oregon series watches that Apple actually studied when getting into the watch game. There was a small moment in time when Nike made watches, and they were awesome.
These brands all designed and made many unique watches as additions to their core product offerings, not as their main category. As a designer, it’s no wonder I am drawn to them, but I am also very drawn to today’s watch brands built by traditionally trained industrial designers; whether it’s Jonathan Ferrer of Brew Watches or Benoît Mintiens of Ressence; and don’t get me started on Che-Wei and Taylor of CW&T, they just make incredibly rad stuff, a couple of watches included! These brands often stand out to me the most within a crowded market of micro-brands, and it’s because they look at things through a different lens, their loupe is less on the movements and complications, but more on the 20 foot read and the joy of beautifully odd aesthetics.
One industry that stands out within industrial design is the automotive industry. Automotive design and watches are inextricably linked for many reasons, but this is where I offer my controversial stance: I don’t love cars. (Gasp!) Let’s be real, I appreciate very few of them, and I absolutely don’t know the difference between all the Porsche 911s and for that matter most watch references and all those numbers. I am here for the joy and follow my own intuition when it comes to collecting, as I think many of you do too. I love art museums. I am the type that flies through them, stopping and lingering at only the few paintings that immediately catch my eye; show me a Cézanne and I will stop for hours. We are all self curated, and that’s what makes design and art so great. We like what we like because we like it. It’s that simple. What I do like about automotive design is when the greats of that industry do equally great work in other industries, and that’s where Giorgetto Giugiaro comes in. Car fans will know Giugiaro for the DMC DeLorean, the BMW M1 and many many more, but we are here to talk about Seiko, not cars.
Seiko is an all-time brand for me, they do so many things so well, and their collaborations with Giugiaro are some of their best releases, IMHO as the kids say. They are just funky enough yet still completely wearable. Ripley wore one in Aliens, for crying out loud! Giugiaro’s use of pop colors, and oddly rotated and positioned features make the watches so enjoyable. Not to mention his strong use of Industrial Designer’s Orange, as it is often dubbed. Many watches look the same these days, or are a derivative of a derivative of a derivative; so when brands like Seiko embrace the slightly funky side, I am all in.
It’s not up to me, or anyone else to tell you what you like or don’t like, or what designs should go to 11 or not. That distinction lives with you and only you.
Buy what makes you happy; go down the rabbit holes that bring you satisfaction; explore new creative endeavors. Just make sure you realize at the end of the day we are here to have fun in life, there’s no need for anything but that—especially in the watch world, and definitely during the state of the current real world we are in. Be kind to your neighbors, be open-minded, and laugh a lot more than you already do.
As Ken Kesey wrote in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and I happened to use as my senior quote in my high school yearbook:
“You can’t really be strong until you can see a funny side to things.”
