To some, watches are an accessory that provides an element of unique style or an expressive element. To others, retreating to balanced minimalism provides perhaps a comforting sense of stability and austerity in an otherwise loud world.
More broadly speaking, I often think that the current trend of “blanding” across many brands and industrial designs is just as much in response to the chaos that many of us feel as it is drafting off the success of Apple’s design language in the mid 2010’s, which is what it often is hypothesized to be.
Part of the attraction to utility-inspired (military, etc) watches is also that this minimalism has been “tried and true” in a real-world sense, and so therefore one might feel like they can “outsource” evaluating whether something is good or not to the history of the design language itself. Again, an anchor which provides stability and comfort psychologically.
As a side note, I think it is interesting (and for me, unappealing) when Sinn and others (Omega, for example) add flourishes (i.e. red hands, MOP dials, the Snoopy Speedmaster, whatever) to their now-classic original designs because it feels like an attempt to leverage both psychological responses to austerity and expression without creating anything substantively new at all. But, people seem to love it in general, and it does create something to collect and broadens the market appeal of the design. I think this is why self-proclaimed “purists” don’t go for that kind of thing but many, many others find it enjoyable.
Also, I think this may be why designs like the Rolex GMT Pepsi might be so popular—it ticks all three boxes: 1. time-tested design, 2. not “boring”, 3. no novelty design gimmicks. Point #3 may relate to why the destro/green GMT got so much hate as well. Additionally, of course, the GMT is not minimal or austere by any means, but I think there are parallels to consider as well in terms of psychological and limbic response to design cues.
To some, watches are an accessory that provides an element of unique style or an expressive element. To others, retreating to balanced minimalism provides perhaps a comforting sense of stability and austerity in an otherwise loud world.
More broadly speaking, I often think that the current trend of “blanding” across many brands and industrial designs is just as much in response to the chaos that many of us feel as it is drafting off the success of Apple’s design language in the mid 2010’s, which is what it often is hypothesized to be.
Part of the attraction to utility-inspired (military, etc) watches is also that this minimalism has been “tried and true” in a real-world sense, and so therefore one might feel like they can “outsource” evaluating whether something is good or not to the history of the design language itself. Again, an anchor which provides stability and comfort psychologically.
As a side note, I think it is interesting (and for me, unappealing) when Sinn and others (Omega, for example) add flourishes (i.e. red hands, MOP dials, the Snoopy Speedmaster, whatever) to their now-classic original designs because it feels like an attempt to leverage both psychological responses to austerity and expression without creating anything substantively new at all. But, people seem to love it in general, and it does create something to collect and broadens the market appeal of the design. I think this is why self-proclaimed “purists” don’t go for that kind of thing but many, many others find it enjoyable.
Also, I think this may be why designs like the Rolex GMT Pepsi might be so popular—it ticks all three boxes: 1. time-tested design, 2. not “boring”, 3. no novelty design gimmicks. Point #3 may relate to why the destro/green GMT got so much hate as well. Additionally, of course, the GMT is not minimal or austere by any means, but I think there are parallels to consider as well in terms of psychological and limbic response to design cues.