The past is an ancient inspiration for many watch designers, but not the British industrial designer Tej Chauhan. He had his sights in the future when creating a second watch for the Swiss watchmaker Rado.
The Rado Diastar Original x Tej Chauhan ($ 2,250) unveiled in February on the India Art Fair in Delhi and has a graphic black dial with silver Sunburst rays that mark the minutes and clear blue rays between 9 and 12 hours.
Those hours have a personal meaning for Mr. Chauhan. He is the most productive from 9 p.m. to midnight, he said, and 9 am to noon “when my brain starts to wake up slowly.”
His design stamp can also be seen on the day and date window, at 3 hours on the dial, which presents information in the designer’s own font. The name of every day has a distinctive color, although they can all be displayed in white when an alternative setting is used.
The case of the automatic watch of 38 millimeters by 45 millimeters is made in gold-colored steel and told with a gold-colored bezel in Rados Ceramos composite, a mix of ceramic and metal alloy. The belt is a swollen rubber design in light gray, closed with a folding closure.
Rados Diastar design was first presented in 1962 and marketed as the world’s first scratch -free watch.
The new design, Mr. Chauhan said, was inspired by the future, in particular science fiction, landscapes generated by artificial intelligence and the film ‘Ad Astra’ 2019 with Brad Pitt, with reflective golden helmets and spaces. (“I really like space suits – it is a Tej,” he said.)
He said that the future – “where I live for half the time” – was constant in his head. “When I design things, I look both in the future and partly in the past, try to combine this kind of futurism with a feeling of accessibility.”
Rado said the watch was sold worldwide, mainly through its website.
The first collaboration of Mr. Chauhan with the brand, the steel and ceramic Rado True Square x Tej Chauhan, was introduced in 2020. The 38-millimeter square dial also contained the blue quarter-hour indicators from 9 to 12 hours.
For Mr. Chauhan, who designed consumer products for telecommunication companies, car fires and other companies, the world of watches should remain an inspiration: “I love the concept of a watch that this is completely self -sufficient, complicated object with one single goal – that is to tell the time.
“Time is one of the few things that we have left that will not get outdated,” he noticed. “There is something about that story that I find really interesting.”
