When the British watch model Paulin launched its OH No mannequin final 12 months – with free-form bespoke numerals designed by with the San Jose kind foundry of the identical identify – it was not anticipated that it will turn into a best-seller.
“That it has suggests typography on a watch dial issues extra that the watch trade maybe permits for, particularly provided that in any other case a watch can simply be a circle with 12 dots on it,” says Lewis Heath, the founding father of Paulin and AnOrdain watch manufacturers. “I feel typography is probably going underneath explored as a degree of distinction on ‘correct’ watches, and that is one thing new smaller manufacturers [arguably less weighed down by heritage or convention] are tuning in to. And I feel watch shoppers are actually beginning to being attentive to typography now”.
The corporate labored beforehand with in-house typographer Imogen Ayres on its Neo watch, and is now collaborating with Kia Tasbihgou – whose purchasers embody the likes of Nike, Greenpeace and Salomon – on a gently italicised, geometric hand-drawn kind for a mannequin due out subsequent summer time. Neither designers have a background in designing for watch dials.
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of brand name)
“When kind is being drawn for such a small floor as a watch face usability must be crucial factor, however as soon as it’s useable it must be stunning, as a result of that’s what lends character to any particular person piece,” reckons Tasbihgou. “[Right now] there’s a way that an excessive amount of watch typography borrows from one another for that”.
Paulin/Anordain shouldn’t be the one watchmaker seeking to exterior experience in relation to kind design. Arguably Hermes set that concept operating with its 2012 Slim d’Hermes, with its Philippe Apeloig-designed stencil-like quantity kind. Nomos Glashutte too has labored with an company to create the ever-so-slightly seriffed types that very subtly minimize in opposition to its in any other case strictly Bauhausian rigour. Different manufacturers have cornered the usage of a sure font – Mondaine with Helvetica, for instance, or Junghans with its Max Invoice-designed font – or, like Ressence, designed their very own from scratch.
However whereas Christian Knoop, artistic director of IWC, reckons that typography accounts for some 80% of a watch’s visible attraction, it stays the norm that many different main and even esteemed manufacturers use off-the-shelf fonts – fonts usually designed for very completely different media – and hope for the very best. That may result in some discordance: Patel Philippe utilizing a florid Chancery font for metropolis names subsequent to hours in plain Arial on its 5131 world time watch, for instance, or Grand Seiko’s use of 4 completely different fonts on its SBGR077.
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of brand name)
In fact, there are technical calls for distinctive to some watch designs – the printing of convex dials utilizing the tampography course of, for instance, is way more complicated than printing on flat paper. However, in keeping with Jerome Burgert, founding father of French watch model Serica, the digitisation of design – which has made tweaking letterforms that a lot simpler – has additionally engendered, by turns, a homogeneity and a recklessness in watch typography. And this even though, provided that small canvas, the look, measurement, weight and positioning of letterforms turn into all of the extra impactful in giving a dial persona.
However, he stresses, kind isn’t every part. With the Parade, Serica’s newest mannequin, an oval costume watch, there’s nearly none in any respect, with even the model identify tucked away in a tiny font measurement alongside the minute observe.
“With instrument watches particularly typography is used to convey details about their functionality however the costume watch is an instance of the way it’s potential for a watch’s design to be robust sufficient to specific model identification with out the reliance on typography,” Burgert says. “I like clear strains and the very fact is that too many watches put typography all over”.
Paulin’s watch typography
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of brand name)
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