Quick! Can you guess the watch brands on this page? All of them are current models from respected and premium Swiss brands. Of course, we’ve taken the liberty to black out the brand names.
Don’t worry about the answers, we’ll come back to them in a while. What should be more interesting is the thought process behind how you arrived at the answers (or gave up).
In the first set you’d probably search your visual memory for references to the obviously retro-style barrel (or ‘tonneau’) case shapes, the extensive use of stainless steel and uncomplicated dials. For the second, you’d quickly figure from the oversized rotating bezels, strong hour markers and arrow-shaped hour hands that the common link was a diving legacy. And the last set would appear relatively modern, even avant-garde, judging from the use of materials like carbon fibre and rubber, the deliberate use of primary colours, and, of course, rose-gold.
If you did arrive at some guesses, it’s probably because your brain thought it ‘recognised’ some of these as signature designs.
The world of watches is a crowded one. Even if we discount the low-end (roughly 80-90 percent) of the global watch market, there would still be a few hundred brands competing for the attention of customers around the world. Within price segments most competing brands are able to offer the same set of ‘features’ (or ‘complications’).
So when it comes to carving an identity and emotional connect in a customer’s mind, it’s often design that must do the trick.