Rolex : The Road Less Travelled

I’m a graphic designer, and I’ve been a watch enthusiast for many years with a modist watch collection at the more affordable end.

With the upsurge in micro-brands over the past few years, the trend is to look back and gain inspiration from older time pieces or a variation on the most popular watches from the likes of Rolex, Omega and even Seiko. But at least some are trying to be original. I know it’s hard to reinvent the wheel, but there are things that can be done, just look at brands like Straton, Formex, Swatch and Tockr.

I feel legacy brands are playing too safe. They are putting a lot of  hype out about new models, the launch date arrives and ‘changes’ are so small it’s very difficult to tell the difference between the old and new models. Or they change the dial colour to another bland drab one. COME ON!

In the past month or so we’ve had a Tudor, launched a blue dial with white indices, YAWN! And Rolex have just announced their new watch, apart from the Oyster Perpetual, I don’t think the general public would know they are new.

Rolex could keep their core black dial Submariner ongoing (with the small tweaks), but have a range that changes every one or two years. This would give their designers and craftspeople a bit of a challenge.

I decided to use my skills and redesign some watches how I would do it, and create some unique designs.

Scottish Watches and Fears Watch Company

So as I’ve been talking about Rolex I’ll Start with them. This is how I would have updated the subby… I’ve shortened the indices at 3, 6 and 9, removed some of the paragraph of writing off the dial, and as a little design touch added the Rolex logo as a counter balance.

The next one is a bit of a funky version, this one is pretty obvious what i’ve done, Orange dial, Orange rubber strap and the outer of the indices are black off the Explorer II. I call it The Subby Clown.

The last Rolex is the explorer (one of my grails). This is pretty simple too. I love the white dial on the Explorer II, but I love the elegance of the Explorer, So I gave it a white dial with black outer indices, and I think it looks beautiful.

With the New Tudor black bay 58 royal blue, I’m not a big fan of the matt blue shade they picked. So I’ve darkened the blue, and made it two tone, then I made the hands, text and indices gold.

I’ve also designed a few unique ones of my own, here are a few… The Hive,

and one inspired by Last year’s Mercedes F1 car.

You can see all my designs, redesign and photos of my collection on my Instagram account @glynn_reynolds

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