Design me a watch!

Ludovic Blanquer has been present since the very beginning of klokers. He talks about his job as a designer and the genesis of the new Klok 08 Minim.

 

Unfortunately, what I am going to say is not the stuff of dreams. Watch design is creation with constraints. Every new model has to make sense in terms of the history of the brand for which it is designed. It must be likely to appeal to the consumer and, finally, it must be manufacturable and not exceed a certain manufacturing cost. These constraints are unavoidable. These are the pillars between which lies the field of possibilities, the creative exercise that blends inspiration with personal culture, taste and experience.

 

A blank page is a designer's worst enemy! You absolutely have to have constraints, otherwise you go off in all directions and soon get lost. Of course, you can have a few flashes of inspiration, but it is still very risky to launch into the creation of something without a framework or reference points, especially when it is a question of coming up with a design for a brand that does not belong to us. The watch designer works for people who will be taking the project far beyond the design itself. At the outset, therefore, the designer must be very attentive to their desires and objectives. Then there is a phase of aesthetic exploration that integrates the rules of watch-making and ergonomics. A watch should be wearable, portable, all within reasonable dimensions. Actually, it is a tiny playground. All the more tiny because there are few materials available, and the range of colours is also very limited... In truth, the whole challenge of creating a new watch is to manage to slip some originality into an object which, at the end of the day, is subject to very specific codes. 

 

Klokers was conceived by Nicolas Boutherin (the brand's artistic director), who does come from the watch-making inner circle. The first time we met, he had a vision that was uniquely fresh compared to any professional I had ever worked with. He had a completely new and candid way of looking at watch-making, not at all fettered by experience which often leads to self-censorship, knowing the technical limits of the sector which are difficult to overcome. Nicolas' approach was unconventional, sometimes even a bit crazy, and it allowed us to think outside the box. For example, he was not the slightest bit interested in displaying the time in the traditional way. Even if I had been given carte blanche, I would never have dared to come up with a design for the movement that did not involve any hands... That's why I always talk about a team effort when designing klokers.

 

By trying to create things differently, we ended up defining specific codes, an identity of our own at klokers... The Minim is an illustration of these many different paths. Initially, Nicolas wanted this new model to be linked to perfumery and, more specifically, to the bottles of great fragrances which are sometimes sculpted by master glass-makers. He was very keen on this idea. This prompted us to look at the structure of the glass in our watches. The coloured dot in the centre is one of the brand’s code, inspired by the slide rules of the 1960s. We wanted to increase it, to create a graphic force at the centre of the watch and to atomise the figures in a very minimalist way at the edges. So this exploration resulted in us to playing with the kinetic aesthetics of Victor Vasarely and his friends... In fact, you pull a thread and other ideas gradually come. It is a game of creative ping-pong with Nicolas, a long intellectual process.

 

The Klok 01 was deliberately overloaded with information. We are in the opposite situation with this new model, which has been named Minim because of its great minimalism. This is the minimum of the minimum. At least at klokers!