I never set out to become a watch face designer, but events in my life set me on that path. What started as a simple fascination with timepieces decades ago has evolved into something I didn’t know was possible – creating my own unique watch face designs that can be shared with the world. Join me as I explore the winding path that led me from a lifelong love of watches to the world of digital design, branding and distribution.
My first watch: Analog
My earliest memory of a watch was at age 5 or 6. My parents gave me an analog watch that had a brown strap, the dial had silver numbers, and the hands were long and thin. The crystal was domed a little and I liked to wear it. This watch was old school. No batteries, no self-winding mechanism. It had to be manually wound daily using its crown to keep running.
I no longer have this watch, and my memory of it is decades old. I searched online, trying to match memory to reality and found that the Timex Sportster 231502 is very close to what I remember. The only exception is that this one has gold tones while mine was completely silver in color.
One of my most vivid memories of this watch was that it had a small crack that ran from the 4 to the 5, and it was very visible. I don’t know how that happened but the crack stands out in my memory. It’s hard to say whether I would have remembered this watch at all had it not been for that crack. Memory is a funny thing.
My first digital watch: LED
As time progressed, my interest in timekeeping grew, and my tastes evolved. This leads me to my next memory. I was about to become a teen and my parents wanted to get me something special for my birthday. When asked what I want, I said with great excitement, “A VCR!” VCR’s were very new and were incredibly expensive. It was not a gift a kid would get, so I went with my second choice: “A digital watch!” At the time, digital watches were quite new as well, and not very popular. Most watch had hands and some were self-winding. But digital watches? They were rarely seen. Not my problem and I just knew I had to have one.
My parents desperately tried to steer me away from the digital watch but would not be as successful as they were steered me away from the VCR. They kept making gift suggestions, none of which I liked. Digital watches back then were expensive and required maintenance such as battery replacement due to the bright, red LED (Light Emitting Diode) to display the time. This was before the more energy-efficient LCD watches came onto the scene. Because LED used a lot of power, the face remained off until a button was pressed to reveal the time. A few seconds later, the display would go dark again. Oddly enough, we seem to have come full circle. Many smartwatches today operate in a similar way.
Digital watches at that time had a simplistic design. Despite my parents’ best efforts, my persistence paid off. They gave me the Litronix LED watch for my birthday, was the best gift I had ever received. I loved checking the time, dozens of times per day by pressing the button to reveal the bright, red numbers. It even worked in the dark, which was amazing to me. I was living in the future!
When I showed my uncle the watch, he was not impressed. He found several flaws in the design and was blunt in pointing them out. He said, “You mean you have to press the button to show the time?” “Yes” I responded, “you have to push the button.” “What if your hands are full? How do you tell time?” he asked. “Here, I’ll demonstrate.” I’d press the button while not looking and then flick my wrist forward to see the time. Easy.
Because it was an expensive watch, my parents wanted me to take extra precautions to take good care of it. This watch was probably not waterproof or even water resistant. They made it clear when they said, “…and whatever you do, DON’T GET IT WET.” They probably meant not to take it into the shower with it, or submerge it in water, but I took their warning quite seriously, because breaking this watch was not an option. I would soon find out that my need to protect my watch from water would not make me very popular in school.
Armed with a water pistol, the kids in class started squirting each other while the teacher wasn’t looking, and I was in the crossfire. I quickly covered my watch so it wouldn’t get wet and as the assault continued, I probably spoke up and said something, catching the attention of the teacher and getting the others into trouble. From my perspective, water was hitting me, my parents said to keep the watch dry, and I did what I had to do to protect my precious watch. The kids in class had a different perspective. They were having fun and I snitched them out. I explained my reaction, showing my watch and hoped they would understand. It didn’t, and it only increased their teasing and torment. Kids can be quite cruel.
Digital watches evolve, and so did my taste
Fast forward a few years. I’m visiting my cousins across the country during the holiday, and they gave me a circular, digital watch. I had mixed feelings because I loved my LED watch and what it took to get it, but I’d soon realize that LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) was a huge advancement in digital watch technology. There were so many improvements:
- Always on display
- Increased battery life
- Day of week
- Date/Seconds display
This watch included a backlight, but I wouldn’t call it an improvement since LED lit up as well.
It was a nice watch, but I don’t remember having the intense love that I had for my Litronix LED. Perhaps it was because receiving it made digital watches no longer seemed special. Rather than something I had to fight for, I was simply handed this new watch without much fanfare. I ended up using it for a few years until I found a watch that truly excited me.
What I needed was a watch with extras. A lot of extras. The Casio C-80 felt very futuristic. Not only did it include a stopwatch, it also a built-in calculator as well, compete with a total of 19 buttons. Now we’re talking! Being a high school student at the time, it was the perfect watch to take to class.
As a small kid, I loved playing with calculators and would punch in numbers and enter functions that I didn’t even understand. I loved how easy it was to run calculations and how quickly it would show the answer to seemingly impossible questions. This watch was a game changer for me and gave me the first taste of having a small computer with me at all times.
Once I had a watch with a calculator, there was no going back. I upgraded to the next Casio model and in addition to a calculator, it also included a “Data Bank.”
In addition a world clock, stop watch, and countdown timer, it also provided storage for contacts and a schedule. Data input was tedious using the keyboard in a similar way to T9 data entry, but it worked! I was able to store contact information on my wrist, making this watch arguably my first PDA. Check out this video if you’d like to see how agonizingly slow data input was and also to see a demo of its features.
By this point in my life, I was buying watches based purely on functionality. While I liked the look of these functional watches as well, not everyone did. My friends at the time strongly encouraged me to get a watch purely on looks so that I had a nice watch to wear when going out. It was off to the store to find a watch that looked good and doesn’t have lots (or any) of tech. But tech can be hidden in different ways and my next watch got me excited about analog watches again. The main feature was thinness, or as Swatch calls it, “ultra-thin.” This watch was thinner than I thought possible for an analog watch. It was light weight, not bulky, and had a metal band. I loved the style with its black and silver coloring.
The thinness really blew me away. How could an analog watch be so thin? I still don’t know how they achieved it, but call me impressed.
I’ll be honest, while writing this blog I completely forgot about this watch. As luck would have it, I was going through a box in my garage and stumbled across this watch while writing this entry. Perfect timing! This watch clearly didn’t want to be forgotten. It would be years before I bought another analog watch. In fact, this was the last one that I’d categorized as a “watch.”
Next time…
We’ll continue this journey by moving to the next category of devices I wore on my wrist: Activity trackers!
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