This week I went to the Brooklyn Flea Market and went through a bunch of old watches in hopes of finding a mechanical watch that I can later take apart and inspect. Unfortunately, it seems like all the watches were quartz but I did bring home three that I thought had particularly interesting designs. I also took documentations of other watches I found interesting.
Here are the three watches I bought. One of them is a dive watch I believe and one of them has multiple moon-related complications and the TITANIUM watch had a very strong steampunk aesthetic to it.
For my own watch face designs, I first came up with the bodybuilder’s watch which has jacked arms and legs for the hour and minute hand. I was inspired by watches where the outer ring could rotate and wanted to put markers 3 hours apart since that is usually the feeding intervals for a bodybuilder. The second and third design are representations of the sky’s changing colors throughout the day, with 4 distinct periods: dawn, midday, dusk, night. The “painting” watch is a more literal and picturesque representation of what each stage would look like in reality. I imagine a digital watch where all you see is the changing sky appearance and as the user you lose track of the more precise changes in time and instead focuses on the broader changes throughout the day. The “gradient” watch is a more abstract version of the “painting” watch where the literal picture is replaced by a field of gradient that corresponds to each of the four periods. My last design is the “steak” watch. I wanted to entertain the idea of designing a timekeeping device that is for a very specific task or purpose. In this case, this is a watch that keeps track of different steak quality and gradually fills up to the top until you hit well-done, which is basically uneatable.
