DESIGN LANGUAGE AT SCALE

With a car, you be able to draw a long swage line across the side view and have it recognizable from thirty feet away. You can’t do the same with watches. Thus in order to study if design language applied across watches, one would need to acknowledge that the way design language is applied changes with scale. To begin to understand this, we need to gravitate back down to the ‘why’ that causes us to carry out a design language project.

While studying design language in cars and consumer electronics, it became evident that design language served four core functions for the brand - creating recognizability, desirability, differentiation from competition and homogeneity across the internal product portfolio. In trying to identify how these goals were achieved in watches, 8 different approaches were noted. They have been named according to the company they have been identified in and are as follows:

1) The Breguet method Breguet has 8 or so unmistakable signs. They include caseband fluting, ‘Breguet’ hands, screwed-on lugs, machine milled dials, Arabic numerals on enamel dials, a hidden signature and the Breguet unique number. Unlike with cars, where you see language cues on every car, Breguet chooses to lay down only a handful of these signs on every Breguet watch. 2) The Cartier method: Cartier is known for the way the words ‘Cartier’ is embedded into 10 hour marker and their distinct art deco styling with roman numerals. However, most the most notable aspect of their design language is how Cartier celebrates the crown of the watch. It does this adding a blue crystal to it. In certain models, you’ll even see the case moulded differently to accentuate the crown.

3) The Junghans method Junghans got its design language established by engaging famous Bauhaus artists like Max Bill to design their models. Through this process, their whole line has adopted the Bauhaus minimalism as its core defining aspect and it carries this till today.

4) The Rolex method Rolex has became famous as manufacturer of tool watches. It is in this respect that their whole portfolio lies in the genre of highly functional or luxury sport watches. Think of their watches are a combination of the regalia and octane collections. Establishing a set genre means that design too gets limited to within a certain zone. Their cyclops crystal and bezel design makes them instantly recognizable.

5) The Swatch method Michael Foley rightly tagged swatch as the ‘T-Shirt of watch companies’. The swatch case and band integration remains consistent across all its models. Like a T-shirt, the basic design of the watch is the same but you can do a lot with colors and graphics.

6) The Vacheron Constantin method If it were up to me, which it might be since no such classification exists till date, I would tag the Vacheron method as the ‘ball on the eye’ method. In an automatic watch where there is a dial cut out to reveal the mechanism (referred to colloquially as ‘open heart’), a person’s eyes go straight to the ticking and moving of the movement. On a Vacheron, when you look here, you will instantly see the Vacheron logo (It’s a Maltese cross) crafted as a structure on over the open heart.

7) The Audemars Piguet method Audemars Piguet are famous for their iconic ‘Royal Oak’ model. Most of their watches are derivations of this iconic model and thus when you look at the collection, you can feel the harmony across the different products (even the cuff-links).

8) The Tiffany and Co. method If you’re familiar with the glamorous side of history, you might be familiar with Tiffany and Co.’s iconic blue boxes. For those who are not familiar with this, Tiffany’s boxes (colored in the patented pantone 1937) have a cult like legacy. Jewellery brands do not focus on design language in their products, but companies like Tiffany & Co. remind us how seriously they take packaging as a means to create harmony.