With our logo and brand name in place, our next step was to come up with a watch design. We knew very well that there were a lot watch OEMs out there offering ready made designs. In fact, there's such a huge variety with designs falling into different categories. E.g. Minimalist, vintage, diver's etc. We could have easily picked one and put our logo on it, but this would of course remove the originality we intend to have in our watches.
This lead us to our very first move in the design phase. We started of sketching our designs on paper. This was then translated into a simple 2D design on our computer. With our aim of making watches for young working adults, we made it clear that we would start off with a basic design that is simple, presentable and with very basic functions of time and date indication.
Some of our 2D designs in the early stage
With a number of designs already on paper, we started filtering them off to lock down on the ones we felt would go well with our logo and brand name. We finally decided on designs with indexes/lines that would accentuate our logo and compliment our intend to introduce a basic entry watch for the young working class.
Sketch of our final designs
The final few designs were run through within the team. We then did a small survey with some of our friends, friends of friends etc. to see which one was the most likable design. The most voted design is what you can see on the second row in above 2D rendering. However, the job was not done. A 2D layout was not sufficient especially when we wanted to communicate with our manufacturer on the specifics. That was when we decided to invest in 3D design rendering. We went with two different softwares. One for 3D model creation and another for the rendering. It was definitely not an easy task but with our aim of having a basic/simple design for our first watch series, the 3D work became a lot easier. Minimal lines, minimal curves, minimal surfaces.
A screenshot of our 3D design
The final touch was the rendering. Importing our model into the 3D rendering software allowed us to render realistic images which helped a lot. It gave us a view of what the actual product would look like (not 100% but at least a lot closer!). And with such renderings, we were able to revise and readjust certain parts. With lots and lots of tweaking and adjustments made, our first design was born.