The Omega Speedmaster Pilot is an interesting new variant of straight-lug Speedmaster with an automatic movement that pitches itself as “Flight Qualified” and leans into a pilot-themed aesthetic. With plentiful pops of colour and unusual details, it seems to have been well received, so I thought I’d break it down from a design perspective.

Ready for takeoff

The Speedmaster Pilot (reference 332.10.41.51.01.002) comes as something of a departure for the Speedmaster line. It’s probably this unexpectedness and novelty that partly accounts for the positive reaction – launches like the white dial Moonwatch inevitably receive as much criticism (from people who find yet-another-Moonwatch boring) as praise (from collectors who’ve been asking for a new white dial variant for years).

One reason why the Pilot is unusual is that it’s not just a new dial in an existing model. It takes as its basis the two-register layout familiar from the Speedmaster ’57, but it uses a different (automatic) movement and a different case. The previous generation ’57 was automatic, but again, it’s a different movement and a different, smaller, case to that model. The calibre 9900 used in the Pilot has only previously appeared in the Speedmaster Racing line and Seamaster 300M and Planet Ocean chronographs, never a flat-lug Speedmaster case style.

Another unusual feature is that the case and bracelet is fully brushed, a nod to use in the cockpit where reflections from polished surfaces would be undesirable. This isn’t something I can remember seeing on any modern flat-lug Speedmaster1 (though I am not an Omega expert in any way, so feel free to correct me in the comments). In addition, the crown is tapered, like the crown on a Seamaster Aqua Terra. Again, I think this might be a first for a Speedmaster.

And that’s all before we get to what’s happening on the dial: an orange minute and grey hour counter, orange-tipped and “winged” chronograph seconds hand, and a yellow running seconds hand inside a black and blue crosshair subdial, made to look like an artificial horizon readout straight from the cockpit.

Invoking the Flightmaster

So where has this design come from, exactly?

The obvious place to look is Omega’s historic Flightmaster line. The Flightmaster name has not been used since the 1970s, having consisted of a handful of references designed specifically to be aviation tools, but their closest modern equivalent is the X-33 line (indeed, some X-33 prototypes were originally labelled Flightmaster). Flightmasters used bright colour coding to differentiate functions on the dial, such as local time, a second time zone, the chronograph seconds, minutes and hours, an internal rotating count-up bezel, and a 24-hour AM/PM indicator.

These colour codings are accompanied by coloured paint on the pushers and crowns that match each function on the dial. Yes, the Flightmaster was a serious tool watch.

We can already recognise some of the features of the Pilot dial here. The triangle-shaped chronograph hands are the most obvious, but the segmented bi-colour AM/PM subdial is something that carries through a few different references on the way to the Pilot, which we’ll look at in a moment.

Similarly, the second time zone or GMT hand has a winged “rocket” shape that relates to the winged hands we see on other Speedmaster models – the purpose being that when hands are aligned (in this case with the local hour hand) the wings are still visible, so you can easily spot it.

The “aeroplane” tipped hands begin to appear on watches like the Speedmaster Mark III.

On the Mark III, the orange-tipped hand displays chronograph minutes. Here it is in the reset position, with the “wings” visible from underneath the chronograph seconds hand:

Here too, we see another bi-colour subdial at 9 o’clock, this time showing day/night (tied to the local time) rather than AM/PM, plus running seconds. The horizontal blue and gray split foreshadows the 2024 Speedmaster Pilot. It’s quite possible that this was a direct point of inspiration for the new design, though there are other through-lines…

The Hodinkee influence

In 2018, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Hodinkee, Omega produced the Hodinkee 10th Anniversary Limited Edition Speedmaster (a.k.a. the “H10”) in a run of 500 pieces. This watch was based on the CK2998 model – which shared a case and movement with the First Omega In Space of the time – but with a custom dial and hands that made reference to Hodinkee founder Ben Clymer’s Speedmaster MK40 that was passed on to him by his grandfather.

The MK40 was a mid-1990s Valjoux automatic-based Speedmaster with a triple calendar complication. It has a blue-and-black AM/PM subdial at 9 and a pointer date, indicated by the yellow-tipped winged hand.

What the H10 design does is carry over these distinctive visual characteristics even though the functionality is no longer there. The running seconds adopts the blue and black AM/PM segmentation2, and the yellow aeroplane tip from the date hand that no longer exists is grafted on to the chronograph seconds hand. It’s pure postmodernism.

Basically, without the H10, I don’t think the Pilot exists. Not only for being a colourful aviation-tool-themed Speedmaster in a flat-lug no-crown-guard case (for which there was no other precedent), but because of its postmodernistic approach of style over substance. I want to be clear here: I’m not saying there is a lack of substance to these watches, per se, nor that the styling is a bad thing. It might be better stated as emotion over function.

What I’m referring to is the design practice of applying the visual signifiers of certain functions in order to create desired associations, even when the functions are not there. In the case of the H10 design, the associations are those of a deeply personal connection with one particular watch. In the case of the Speedmaster Pilot, the associations are if I were a pilot, I would wear this watch. A marketing trope as old as watch marketing itself. Of course, Omega know exactly what they’re doing – it’s precisely why they first produced a version that only flight-qualified pilots in the US were allowed to buy, teased it via Omega Forums and the watch media, and then followed up with the publicly available one. It’s an attempt to validate the watch as a genuine pilot’s tool watch. Did they need to do that? You tell me.

The nitty-gritty

It certainly says “FLIGHT QUALIFIED” on the dial, but then all Speedmasters are flight qualified, aren’t they? You sort of expect that. Maybe that’s just Moonwatches.

The wide style of that text isn’t something I’ve seen from Omega before, and it does jar a little with the other styles on the dial. It also feels jammed in below the Speedmaster logo.

The Futura-based “Co-Axial Master Chronometer” text is present as usual, with “Co-Axial” spaced out much wider than the second line (not a fan of that) and the hyphen in its default position (too low) as always.

The numerals on the subdials and bezel insert are the new style that Omega debuted on the hand-wound Speedmaster ’57. On the whole, I quite like them. I like the openness of the 2 and the 4, the flat top of the 3 and the sweeping shape of the 7. The 2 in particular is a big improvement over the standard heritage/Moonwatch numerals, being more balanced and less offset to the left. However, it has a few numerals that are slightly less successful in my eye. The 6 and 9 have quite a small loop – I’d have preferred larger, more like the Moonwatch numerals. And finally, the 8 feels a little small due to the upper bowl being narrower than the lower part. Overall: a good effort. These are small details, but small details are appreciated in these quarters.

The date window, unfortunately, does not use these numerals but sticks to Omega’s standard squashed Futura (a shame).

Lastly, let’s talk about the subdials. Here’s what Omega says about them:

At 9H, the Small Seconds display, with its “target/sight” aesthetic inspired by cockpits, features a varnished matte-yellow hand and artificial horizon in blue.

At 3H, the 60-minute and 12-hour recorder is inspired by the “burn-rate” indication in aircraft cockpits, with a triangular matte-orange hand and transferred white numerals.

This leaves us in little doubt that the design process was primarily aiming to evoke the feel of an aviation-themed watch rather than create one to be used by aviators. It reminds me quite a lot of a brand who are the incumbent masters of this: Bell & Ross.

Bell & Ross have a whole line of watches that very explicitly reference aviation instruments, from the case itself to the dial designs, which cleverly adapt a variety of cockpit readouts into time-telling form. The BR-03 Horizon, for example, uses a full-dial disc with an “artificial horizon” graphic as the hour hand.

They really commit to their theme, and the graphic design is always slick and tidy with great colours. If you like the concept, I think they’re a ton of fun.

The Speedmaster Pilot attempts to capture some of this colour and fun, but in a much smaller dose. And on its own terms, I think it works, as long as you don’t interrogate it too hard. I’m a little confused by the combination of a target crosshair with the artificial horizon, and I’m not sure what a “burn rate” indicator is supposed to look like since a brief image search doesn’t turn much up. (Again, perhaps someone will enlighten me in the comments.)

The totaliser subdial does have another quirk of its own though – a set of orange hash marks at 3, 6 and 9 minutes. This is a historical feature found on chronographs (particularly pilots’ chronographs) that crops up again and again on vintage watches. The exact reason for it is still not entirely clear – Revolution take a stab here at summarising the main theories – but its inclusion on the Speedmaster Pilot is seemingly to link it to pilots’ watches of the past. Once again: zero practical use, simply an attempt to invoke something it is not.

Ultimately, to me the Pilot feels somewhat caught between trying to be a genuinely useful pilots’ watch and telling a marketing story.

In conclusion

I don’t want it to sound as though I’m bashing the Speedmaster Pilot. I think it’s going to be very successful in its niche. The design is fun, there are some great details (I haven’t even mentioned the brushed minute track or the solid lume blocks on the hands and markers) and it’s undoubtedly a breath of fresh air in the Speedmaster range. Following on from the new First Omega In Space and the updated hand-wound ’57, it’s been a strong recent run for flat-lugged Speedies.

Perhaps, post-Moonswatch, Omega are allowing themselves a little more room to experiment with new designs that appeal to a younger demographic. Here’s to more experimentation and more… well, fun.

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That’s all for this issue. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you for more nerdy watch design analysis in 2025.

Samuel

Black Bough have carved out a niche in selling very attractive, midcentury, reasonably priced vintage watches – Omega, Longines, and the like – and I look forward to their email every week to see what Alex has sourced. This week’s crop was particularly strong from a design and typographic perspective so I’ve decided to take a look at some of them here.

Let me know if you enjoy this post and if you’d like me to do more like it.

Tudor Prince Oysterdate Ref. 7990-4

The Prince Oysterdate is of course the Tudor version of the Rolex Datejust, but this variant has some really interesting details in its own right. I really like the old blackletter Tudor logo – it’s quite distinctive and elegant in this application, and it’s a bit of a shame (if entirely understandable) that most brands that used blackletter have ditched theirs1.

The “smiley” SELF-WINDING text2 is present and correct, neatly hand rendered and with a typical flat top and bottom to the S and the G. Note also that the hyphen is drawn at the correct height for text that is all capitals, being halfway up the letter, roughly where the centre bar of the F is. If you type that out with a typical font, you’ll see the hyphen is lower. Look: F-W. That’s because hyphens usually appear in text between lower-case letters, and the font is designed to make it look right in those situations. The compromise is that it’s too low (and also a bit short) when set between capital letters3. See how many modern watches you can spot that glitch on.

I also like the rose printed directly onto the applied 12 o’clock marker, almost like a traditional cartouche, and of course the roulette date wheel with its very curvy, squidgey 3s:

The watch is now sold but the listing can be found here.

Omega Seamaster de Ville Ref. 166.020

This De Ville with a lovely linen dial (the direction of the pattern is almost like a very fine waffle dial) has a couple of interesting touches. Firstly, and rather unusually, the “A” in the applied Omega logo has a flat top. Omega logos vary quite a lot until the adoption of the standardised modern Futura-based logo but they follow a fairly consistent pattern. Usually the A is pointed, which the wide pointed M then matches.

Secondly, the date numerals have a neat, sharp hook on the 1s. I like that a lot. And thirdly: look at the facets on the date window surround:

Love that. More of that sort of thing in modern watches please. This watch is also sold but the original listing is here.

Longines Ref. 7135-11

More nice facets, clean applied numerals, and the classic Longines text, but really it’s about those “caret”-shaped minute markers, something I’d not seen before.

This Longines is priced at £875 here.

Omega Seamaster 600 Ref. 135.011

Here we see the more usual Omega logo, with the wide pointed M and A, but the stars of the show are those faceted Arabic numerals, each one angled down the middle like the peak of a roof.

They’re also unexpectedly tall:

Everything else on the dial is neat, tidy and elegant, but the numerals really make it stand out in a sea (no pun intended) of handsome 1960s Seamasters. Black Bough have sold at least one of these before and I loved it then – I could see one in my future.

This one is also sold, but the listing is here.

Telda Triple Calendar

This is a bonus one: it wasn’t part of the stock update but it’s so interesting I wanted to feature it.

First, the Telda logo is quite cool and unusual, with its pointed wedge shapes and wide spacing. I’ve seen a few variants of this logo (similar to how you see many variations of the Omega logo) and this particular execution looks really good on the clean white dial.

The small text is very cleanly and neatly done for maximum legibility at the tiny sizes involved (the watch is 32mm in diameter). All the classic tricks are employed to open the letters up: hooked J, flat top and bottom S and G, flat top A, and a K with a horizontal bar. The date numerals are in a very classic style with mostly curved numbers, stick 1s and a flat top 4. The blue colour is a nice touch to differentiate them.

Possibly the nicest feature are the large Arabic numerals. They are in general slightly unusual in their form. The 4 is neither the straight-edged flat top type but also not the version that curves gently from the top right to bottom-left; it’s something in between. The hook on the 7 points back in towards the centre of the number, which you very rarely see. And also very noticeable are the 2s and the 9, which have a smooth curved top that echoes the 0 and 8, but then comes off at a straight tangent down to the bottom. It’s much more typical on both of these numerals to have a more continuous smooth curve at the bottom (as on the date numerals on the same dial). This more geometric execution helps lend it a somewhat technical, instrument-like feel that I really like.

This Telda triple calendar in NOS condition is available for £925 here.

That’s it for this week. Hope you enjoyed this look at some of Black Bough’s vintage stock – I highly recommend subscribing to their email updates as there are always some very attractive watches.

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Before I go, I wanted to mention that there might be some changes to the regular weekly schedule of this newsletter over the holiday period, and possibly going forward. I’m still figuring out what format and schedule works best around my regular client work, and considering how much depth I should go into in each issue. Please subscribe for updates on that, but in the meantime I welcome any and all feedback!

See you next time,

Samuel

I thought it was time that I explain exactly what I mean when I say “digitally distorted”, and why I dislike it so much on watches in particular.

Type and typography

Let’s quickly run through how watch typography used to be created, and how it’s created now, because there’s a huge technological sea change that happens: computers.

In the old days, much as in any manufacturing field you care to think of, more or less everything was done by hand. Increasingly, technology came along that made the processes involved faster, easier, and more consistent. These technologies diminish handcraft but greatly increase speed of production and enable economies of scale, and so they win.

In the case of typography, we went from hand-written reproduction of manuscripts, to woodblock printing, to movable type, to offset lithography, to digital printing. All of those printing and production technologies affected the design and layout of the printed matter itself.

On watches, the earliest dials were for a long time hand-painted or hand-engraved onto metal and enamel, and the styles used reflected that. In the late 19th century, a significant new technology was introduced in the form of pad printing (also known as tampography, or décalque). This technique has endured through to today, with only minor changes and improvements. The main evolution has been to the method of producing the engraved plate (or cliché): from hand-engraving, to chemical engraving, to laser engraving.

But these changes in plate production techniques are minor compared to the impact of the desktop publishing revolution on the design of what is being printed. In the past, the printed design was hand-rendered. Someone had sat down and drawn, or painted, the letters and numbers – one by one. This inevitably resulted in certain styles and conventions becoming the norm for watches, in parallel to book or newspaper styles but quite distinct from them, as they used fonts in the form of movable metal type, developed for printing extended blocks of text onto paper. Watch lettering was designed for its own purposes and existed in its own context.

So when computers arrive and suddenly allow you to take centuries of wider typographic history in the form of digital fonts, to rotate it, scale it and even distort it freely, suddenly the old rules don’t exist anymore.

A tradition of selling tradition

With a few notable exceptions, what subsequently happens to watch typography is very much not what happens in print design. Graphic designers pounced on the Macintosh and its DTP software ravenously, and started producing all kinds of typographic freestyle that had never been possible before.

Watch brands, being quite staid, old-fashioned entities that trade on heritage and tradition, did not rush to embrace this kind of thing. The notable exception of course is Swatch – but Swatch operated far away at the other end of the market, and had to be disruptive, youthful and fashionable.

But regardless, the technology had become ubiquitous, and it was only a matter of time before the traditional dial makers such as Stern gradually faded as watch brands brought dial design (and sometimes manufacture) in-house. All the expertise of the artisans who had patiently hand-lettered dials for decades was gradually discarded in favour of someone whose primary qualification was (in all likelihood) “knows how to use a computer”.

The reason for this is, basically, “cool, now we can use these fonts to design our dials instead of paying those guys all that money”. I’ll come back to this in a future newsletter, but the proliferation of free computer system fonts like Times New Roman, Arial and Zapf Chancery on the dials of prestigious watchmakers, such as Jaeger-LeCoultre and Patek Philippe, arguably marks the point at which dial design started to “go wrong” in many people’s eyes.

Bend me, shape me

What those prestigious brands demonstrate is that, even using a computer that can manipulate fonts with ease, it’s not really that straightforward to arrange type elegantly in a confined space. Typographers know this – it takes years of education and practice to learn how to do it well. But a lot of dial design that appears today still just looks like the person that created it isn’t quite in control of what they’re doing.

Let’s compare these two Patek Philippe perpetual calendars, the (neo-?) vintage 3940 and modern 5327. The 3940 (on the left) was introduced in 1985, and during its production lifetime the digital revolution would take hold, with its dial getting progressively worse over time with later iterations. This culminates in the final insult, the “Saatchi” edition (produced in 2015 using new-old-stock cases) with a salmon dial that has digitally distorted type scattered all over it:

The date indication on the Saatchi is… borderline crazy, honestly. The numbers skew and stretch, ducking and leaning around the other subdials, colliding with each other and nearly falling into the moonphase. The idea of it even being symmetrical, let alone balanced, does not seem to have concerned them.

This is not good practice – show it to a teacher of typography and watch them recoil – but it’s something that Patek has wholeheartedly embraced. Photoshop typography: tap out a number, hit command-T (for transform) and drag those corners! Go wild!

The above image shows regular Arial numerals as Patek has used (again, the Arial rant is one for a future issue), distorted (as on the 29) and stretched (as on the 9). Stretched in this context means “transformed along a single axis”. The most obvious artifact of these distortions is that the letters get thinner and thicker in places that they shouldn’t.

In doing so, they immediately become quite ugly, but that’s not the only problem. The number stops looking like a number, and starts looking like a picture of a number, hanging in space at an angle to the viewer. Letters and numbers are things, not pictures of things. We read them most easily when they are presented in their best light: undecorated, unobscured, and undistorted. Think about road markings: words are painted on the asphalt in an extremely tall style precisely because, when seen from behind the wheel, they become the right height1.

Going back to the comparison between the first series 3940 and the modern 5327, we can see the stark difference. Even without analysing the reasons why, the gulf in elegance is plainly enormous. And for a watch that ought to epitomise elegance, or at least a certain type of elegance, that feels like a failure of design.

I probably don’t need to point out the myriad weird bits of typography on the 5327 – the inconsistencies in weight, width and spacing, the skewed numbers (like the 31 leaning over), “FRI” being unnecessarily condensed next to the other days, letters colliding… It’s just a mess.

I’m certainly not advocating for everything to look like a vintage watch. My personal preference is for collecting new watches, not vintage, and I’m a fan of plenty of modern designs such as the Ressence 1° (which I may well take a look at in a future issue – and no, I can’t afford to own one). Digital typography isn’t the problem; it’s the distortion, scaling, poor spacing, etc. In most cases, it’s just bad practice. The user is to blame, not the tool.

My plea to watch brands is simply to take a closer look at what you’re putting on the dial. A little care and attention from an experienced professional could make a world of difference – hopefully not only to other designers who see it, but also to the collectors who obsess over these details just as much.

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That’s it for this week. Let me know your thoughts on this subject in the comments or on my Instagram. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time.

Samuel

Before we get into it, self-promotion protocol dictates that I should mention that an interview with me by Thomas van Straaten was published on the Fratello site a few days ago – check it out here.

Ok, let’s get started.

A different flavour of Heuer chronograph

I have to admit, I was only vaguely aware of the Cortina before I saw this post, and I’ve yet to see one up close. Until recently, of the ’60s and ’70s Heuer chronograph designs, I would have said the Camaro was probably my favourite (ok, the 1960s manual wind Carreras aren’t bad either). Now, having pored over these images, I think that might have changed.

Introduced in 1977, the Cortina was apparently aimed at winter sports enthusiasts rather than following Heuer’s traditional motorsports focus1. Unlike most of Heuer’s ’70s chronographs, there’s no tachymeter scale (the similar but more rounded-shaped Heuer Daytona, which used the same calibre and was introduced the same year, does have one). Inside is the automatic micro-rotor Calibre 12 movement developed with Buren, with a date at 6 o’clock, a thirty-minute counter at 3 and twelve-hour counter at 9. The Heuer-signed crown is also on the left, and there is no running seconds indication.

The standout feature of the Cortina design is immediately obvious: the unusual angular-yet-rounded octagonal case shape with its integrated steel bracelet. Despite the prevailing sense that the ’70s was the decade of integrated bracelet steel sports watches, this wasn’t something Heuer dabbled in very much. The famous Royal Oak and Nautilus bracelets were very expensive and finely finished, and Heuer, essentially, made tools, not jewellery.

However, while most other ’70s Heuers preferred a domed barrel or C-shaped case, the Cortina tried something quite different. Its bezel-less case curves upwards to a flat plane surrounding the plexiglass crystal, and tapers away elegantly at the edges, emphasised by the circular brushing. Comparing it with the (otherwise quite similar) Daytona shows just how different this case looks from the norm at the time:

To me, the soft pebble shape of the Daytona makes it look very ’70s, and quite dated. The Cortina manages to look much more bold and distinctive, even timeless.

A dial full of detail

The dial of the Cortina is a real masterclass, in my opinion. All the elements work in harmony together, with balance and clarity.

The chronograph register hands have a bold rectangular design that echoes the printed (lume) hour markers, and the two registers use a combination of slightly bolder hash marks where a numeral is placed, and thinner lines in between for the single minute and half hour increments on the respective counters. This, along with insetting the numerals, helps anchor the numbers to the scale but also makes picking out the in-between values easier.

The register numerals themselves are classic hand-drawn dial figures all the way – in this case, with a stick 1 (no overhang), hooked 7, flat-topped 4, and flat-topped 3, all to aid legibility. (I’ll go into the reasons why watch numerals are traditionally designed the way they are in a future instalment of Watching Type.)

At the top centre is the Heuer logo and model name, in the style that Heuer employed across nearly all their models, with the model name first. The Heuer logo is beautifully rendered with some tiny, barely perceptible serifs to help avoid ink pull-up.

The Cortina text is elegantly drawn and tightly spaced with the same overall weight as the logo, and similar, slightly more pronounced serifs. It elects not to use a flat-topped A, as it’s large enough not to need the extra space inside the letter (and I suspect, in 1977, it might have looked old-fashioned). But there’s one really unusual detail which I love – inside the angles of the N are what are called “ink traps”. This is a feature designed into some fonts that are intended for use at very small scale and/or on a surface that causes the ink to “bleed” (soak into the paper) and the printed letter to spread. Tight inner corners of letters can cause ink to pool up in those areas, so to alleviate this, a space is “hollowed out” of the corner.

An example of this is the Bell Centennial typeface designed by Matthew Carter for AT&T. It included specific styles for printing the telephone directory, which required very small type sizes on lower-quality, uncoated paper: the ideal conditions for heavy ink bleed to result in illegibility.

But, I hear you cry, this is a watch dial, not paper – surely the ink doesn’t bleed into the metal? You’re absolutely correct. And this text is by no means the smallest on the dial. So, why the ink traps? There are two possible reasons. Firstly, it might be that the ink could pool in those corners from the plate transfer and result in a misprint. However, given the overall high quality of the dial printing, I think that’s unlikely. Instead, I think it’s probably intended to mitigate the optical effect. Light type on a dark background, optically, appears larger. Dark type on a light background optically shrinks2. And so to avoid a distracting brighter/bolder spot appearing at those points, some of the white stroke is removed.

My gut feeling is that this is the designer / drafter showing off a little bit, and I love it. Was it strictly necessary? Almost certainly not. Will anyone except nerds like me notice? No. Does it show how much care and pride was put into the job? Absolutely.

Another area where I think the drafter has employed a little flair is the “AUTOMATIC CHRONOGRAPH” text.

This, unlike any of the other text on the dial, is clearly based on the font Univers, one of the classic modernist “grotesque” sans-serifs. To be clear, watch dial designs of this period were hand-rendered, including the type3, and this is no exception. Fonts were not used except as a reference, and this is why it’s a bit of a flex. These letterforms are not particularly easy to draw by hand – they weren’t designed to be – and it’s a lot harder to make them consistent and look right than traditional dial-makers’ letterforms. The G in particular: chapeau.

It’s maybe also the reason why the kerning looks inconsistent in places on this text (e.g. O/M, R/A/P) – the letterforms are simply less forgiving of being slightly off, and if you’re sticking closely to the design of the font you can’t start making letters wider or narrower as you please (which happens a lot on most pre-digital dials). The extended spacing of R/A/P in CHRONOGRAPH does look a little like the designer realised they needed to make the word a bit wider as they got towards the end… we’ll never know for sure. Fortunately the hand-rendering does mitigate the spacing a bit – if these were digital letterforms it would look worse.

At the bottom of the dial is a neat “SWISS” legend, sized to match the width of the date window and in the standard flat-topped S style. The date window itself is smartly framed in white print and stamped with an internal bevel, the lower bevel edge being shallower than the others – a thoughtful design detail that takes into consideration that the wearer is more likely to read the date from slightly below than from straight-on.

The date indicator contains some lovely hand-drawn numerals, with careful details typical of the period. As you’d expect, stroke thickness is consistent across the different dates. Take a look at the numbers 2, 21 and 22 – the numeral 2 is different in each, maximising the space available without appearing squashed or distorted.

The 1 and 11 include small overhangs, which are omitted wherever else a 1 appears. And the 3s and 8s are quite unusual, with a high centre of gravity that makes them rather distinctive.

I’m sure some will dislike the use of a dark-on-light date wheel. I’ve never been too bothered by this on most watches – dark on light seems to read better at a glance in most situations, I think, and on many watches the light area serves as a replacement for the hour marker that is no longer there, balancing the dial. Suffice to say, it certainly doesn’t bother me here, and I think the watch would look worse with a black date disc.

Overall, what really makes the Cortina design great is how it comes together. Proportionally; in terms of sizing and spacing; the legibility; the shapes of the hands; the letterforms. Everything works in harmony and was clearly designed by someone who really knew what they were doing. I’m a big (new) fan.

By all accounts, the Cortina is quite a chunky watch, at nearly 14mm thick, and I expect it sits high as many automatic chronographs of the ’70s do. So it might be that when I finally get to try one on, the experience may not live up to the design. But I look forward to having the chance to find out.

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That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time.

Samuel

Reviving the Polerouter

This week, the biggest news in the watch world has probably been the (somewhat unexpected) unveiling of a set of three brand new, pièce unique Universal Genève SAS Polerouters.

To summarise (if you’re not caught up with recent UG developments): in late 2023 it was announced that the dormant UG brand had been acquired by the same ownership group as Breitling, with Breitling CEO Georges Kern to oversee the relaunch. After a collectors’ summit in May this year, the expectation was that we were still a good two years away from seeing any actual new watches from the brand; but then, a few days ago they dropped these (to coincide with the 70th anniversary of SAS’s first flights over the north pole from Copenhagen to Los Angeles).

One of the big question marks around the UG relaunch, from a product and design standpoint, has always been to what extent we were going to see pure vintage-reissue / facsimile designs, and to what extent the brand might try to be a little braver and evolve from the historical designs or even launch something genuinely new. After all, one of the things you frequently hear from Universal collectors is that what got them into the brand was the sheer number and variety of different designs that it produced. There is unquestionably an element of innovation and forward-thinking in the brand’s DNA. The Polerouter itself is a perfect example of that. As Brice Goulard writes for Monochrome:

The standout feature of the Polerouter was its three-dimensional effect, achieved through a two-part design featuring a tension ring with hour markers fixed to the glass and a curved dial to secure the movement. The arrangement, patented by Universal Genève in 1953, was considered a technical and visual achievement.

This is inseparable from the bold and innovative exterior and visual design, by a 23-year-old Gérald Genta.

So, with the presentation of the 70th Anniversary models, do we now have an answer to that question? Is it going to be vintage repro all the way for the new UG?

Maybe, maybe not. I don’t think it precludes Universal Genève from branching out in the future, once it’s made sure that it hasn’t offended the UG traditionalists or collectors. And it would be quite the risk to launch with something entirely new – especially given the market’s ongoing love of vintage watch styling (and notable aversion to new designs from brands who are best known for certain classics).

So let’s reserve judgement on that front. What I do want to take a look at is the execution of these new pieces, in the context of them being very close imitations of the classic no-date twisted-lug Polerouter design.

What’s immediately obvious is that these are extremely close reproductions. They use recommissioned vintage calibres and a case that is indistinguishable from the originals. The hands are also of the same design, with the same proportions and execution (the point on the counterweight of the seconds hand is one of the rarer styles that was used, but it did exist1). The raised hour ring rehaut – possibly the single most defining feature of the Polerouter design – is the one part that I think improves on the original, at least in terms of execution. The machine turning of the original has been recreated with diamond cutting, and I expect that the effect of the sharper and cleaner cuts makes a significant difference to the impression of “fineness” without deviating from the original design.

Still: so far, so virtually-indistinguishable.

Where things start to differ is in the graphics and typography.

A new logo

The first incarnation of Universal Genève used many different logos. Generally, they are based on a letter U in the shape of a shield (a popular Swiss/Genevan theme that refers to the cantons’ coats-of-arms); initially, the U had a point at the bottom of the lower curve in reference to this. Later, when UG’s dial graphics became thinner and more refined, it lost the point and instead became a simple semicircular U shape framed in a square. But in addition to these basic shapes there was quite a variety of different designs – when tuning fork movements come in, there’s a tuning fork shape framing the U; there’s a fat and wide-bottomed 1960s U; there’s a version contemporary to the early U which is framed inside a pointed shield, instead of the U itself being pointed. And so on.

Most recently the logo had become something resembling a wave or flow of water, constructed from three parallel lines swooping to form the U shape. This is probably the variant that looks the least like a shield and also the variant most associated with the decline of the brand from an enthusiast perspective, so it’s perhaps odd that this is the version that the rebrand looks the most like.

What the new logo seems to be trying to do is to blend a number of different logos from UG’s past together into a new one. This isn’t an uncommon approach nowadays. It’s the natural result of a design process that includes lots of people, that is highly cognisant of the brand’s history, and that has been through many (many) rounds of iteration and sign-off. Often, unfortunately, what tends to come out of a process like that is a design that lacks punch – something that is unlikely to provoke a strong response, either positive or negative.

The decision to “invert” the point, to move it inside to the negative space, for me, diminishes it. When you see it large, you might understand what it is intended to represent. But more likely, you’ll see a filter or pipette shape - a hollow space, in which something would fall down and exit through the hole at the bottom.

It also gets fussy at small sizes. It simply looks as if the lower of the two lines is broken, for no obvious reason. However, as used on the 70th Anniversary Polerouters, I think it’s acceptable, for one simple reason: inverted, framed in a solid square, the pointed shield shape becomes positive again, and the heaviness of the square gives it some presence and authority that the standard version lacks.

The logotype (AKA wordmark) fares less well on the dial. Like the symbol, it bears the visual traits of something that has been very carefully walked through a process of rational, polite development. It takes as its starting point the curved point at the bottom of the new “U” symbol, and applies it to its terminals2 wherever it reasonably can.

This is a very common recent design trend, and one that draws quite a bit of ire from some quarters. There are any number of rebrands one can point to where all that seems to have been done is to take an unremarkable typeface and cut a few corners off here and there. The biggest issue I have with this is: all you are really doing is weakening the letterforms. No character or unique recognisability is added in this way. And when you scale it down? Yep, it all disappears anyway.

Another aspect of the wordmark is that the “GENÈVE” part is identical, in terms of style, weight3, shape etc., to the upper “UNIVERSAL” part; it has simply been shrunk down to make it smaller. The larger you reproduce the lockup4, the less this matters, but at smaller sizes you start to see the GENÈVE as much thinner/lighter in colour, and thereby unbalanced with the larger text above. It’s normal for smaller text to be a bit thinner in absolute terms but simply scaling it down looks like a digital artifact, too modern in feel for a watch that evokes the 1950s.

Having said that – I don’t want to criticise the logo too much because overall it has been sensitively and respectfully designed, and avoids copying any particular vintage logo. The kerning is mostly ok, apart from an unexpectedly wide “NI” pair. The balance and spacing of the symbol (in the square) and the logotype is solid and sits at a comfortable size on the dial.

Typography

The POLEROUTER text, on the other hand, is a little odd. It’s in a different style to the logotype, which is fine, but it’s almost not different enough. It echoes the slanted letterforms of the original but it looks like a font rather than a custom wordmark. It seems as if they tried to find a font that was as close to the original as they could (not an easy task), rather than drawing something bespoke to sit properly with the rest of the type. It’s also spaced closer to the logotype lockup than the symbol is, which feels a bit off. Perhaps that’s a consequence of the SAS branding taking over the lower half of the dial5, but I do wonder if the logotype could have been a tiny bit higher up, just to make things a little more comfortable.

Overall, the dial typography just looks a fraction imbalanced and a fraction digital. Not terrible by any means, but not a ten out of ten effort either.

The caseback design, for me, is by far the weakest part of the whole thing. I assume the illustration in the centre has been adapted from a piece of promotional material produced at the time. It’s a bit indistinct and I think it needs to be bigger, but that’s not really the issue. The problem is the type. The “UNIVERSAL-GENÈVE” wording is distorted6 and tracked7 so tightly that the letters collide, while the “POLEROUTER” text is spaced right out. The difference between them is quite jarring.

The additional text, around the edge, also has some curious decisions in it. It’s the same style as the illustration text, but slightly lighter; this, plus its tracking, makes it different enough to look like a mistake, or carelessness. It’s either too similar or not similar enough. It also reads the opposite way around – the baseline8 of the text is towards the perimeter, rather than the centre. (Note: the large gap in the text on one side is occupied by a serial number and hallmarks that don’t exist on these images.)

Overall – it’s a bit messy and loose, and lacks the elegance of the dial side (and indeed, of the Polerouter as a whole).

A sign of things to come?

Fortunately, I don’t think the deficiencies detract too much from what is a really attractive set of watches (and you wouldn’t see the caseback on the wrist, of course). It might be that if and when a production version arrives, it would even have a display caseback.

I’m hopeful that we could eventually get some novel Polerouter variants. There were often dozens of different dial and hand configurations available at any one time from Universal, yet I’m not sure the Genta twisted lug design was anywhere near exhausted. Apart from the Polerouter Date version (the numerals of which could form the basis of a newsletter of their own), UG generally chose to produce more complicated Polerouters in other case shapes, or in other product lines entirely. But if you think about how successfully other strong Genta designs have been adapted to accept additional complications – the Royal Oak and Nautilus are the obvious examples – why couldn’t you make a chronograph or triple calendar Polerouter? Though perhaps you wouldn’t want to skeletonise something that is intended to resist magnetic forces…

That’s all for this edition. Thanks for sticking with me through this brain dump on the 70th Anniversary Polerouters. What do you think of them? Let me know in the comments and if you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider subscribing if you haven’t already.

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Until next time,

Samuel

Naturally, I’m very interested in watch design and, like others, I’ve often thought about why watches are designed the way they are, and why many brands seem to do such a poor typographic job with their modern products compared to vintage watches from the “glory days” (whatever / whenever they were). But also, I love to see new brands and new watches emerging all the time, and some of them are doing really interesting and novel things with their designs. So, I thought I’d start this newsletter to share some of my thoughts on all aspects of watch design and typography.

It might be my critique of a watch that’s doing the rounds on Instagram, or dissecting a new product or rebrand that’s just launched. It might be to do with a watch I happen to have seen out in the wild, at a meetup, or an exceptional vintage piece. Or, it might be a look at some of my own work and processes. It could even be about something else entirely!

It won’t (usually) be a particularly long read, but I might get into a deep dive now and again. I can get nerdy about this stuff, but I’ll try to keep a lid on that side of things.

Some likely topics for my first few issues include: the recently revealed 70th anniversary Polerouters; the Cubitus, and Patek’s love affair with Arial; a typographic breakdown of the beautiful Heuer Cortina I saw on Instagram the other week; what makes a Breguet numeral?; and some backstory on the VPC Type 37HW which is due to start delivering to customers in early December. I’m aiming for a weekly cadence but hey – let’s see how things go.

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I hope you’ll find some of what I talk about interesting and stick around. I’m always learning (who isn’t?) so I’m certainly looking forward to seeing where it takes me. Make sure to subscribe to have new posts delivered straight to your inbox, and don’t forget to follow me on Instagram for updates with fewer words and more pictures.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Samuel