There is an interesting book about the history of design at General Motors that talks through the time with “designing” a new car turned into “styling” a new car- and when you think through the two words, there is a difference between them.

The designers will tell you that to design is to engineer the way that something works- to create a product with its primary intended function being the highest priority and the aesthetics coming second- form following function.

The term “stylist” tends to imply the opposite- create a nice looking shell first and then hand it over to the engineers to stuff the operating pieces inside. Somehow, styling seems to have less integrity than designing.

These rules- like so many others- apply to watches in a similar way as they do to cars. Chronograph watches by nature can have busy dials- perhaps a tachy scale, a 30 minute counter on the right and a 12-hour counter on the left.

What these simple designs have is a purity of purpose. They were designed to be used as a chronograph and so had to be easy to read, especially as one was racing through the Mexican countryside on the Carrera Pan Americana of the 1950s. This lends an air of authenticity to the design- form following function.

Many of the Vintage-era Heuer watches have this design integrity- whether it be the multi-coloured sub-dial of  the Skipper giving 5-minute countdowns or the complex bezel of the Calculator.

So, I think its fair to say that many of the Vintage Heuer designs can claim form over function (a stylist would have flipped out at the first viewing of the Calculator)- but what about modern TAG Heuer watches? There are certainly some innovative looks being gifted to many new models- but are these form over function, or vice-versa?

Since the acquisition of TAG Heuer by LVMH, there has been a discernible shift towards the “Avant-garde” sector of the market (maybe to pay homage to TAG itself- Techniques d’Avant Garde) for newer designs, with the classics range satisfying the more conservative buyers.

This has resulted in some pretty interesting dials- but the critical question is this- has TAG created an innovative design that has improved the chronograph, or are the new dials just a mess of sliding discs, sub-dials and text? Lets look at a few models:

1) Calibre S

TAG has gradually introduced the Calibre S system across its model range over the last couple of years, marketing it as a “electro- mechanical” system- in other words, Quartz with a twist.

Calibre S has two modes- “Chrono” and “Hour”. When its on “Hour”, the two semi-circle sub-dials point to the date- the first digit from the left counter (i.e. will only read 0, 1, 2 or 3) and the right counter showing the second digit (0 through 9).

When the setting is moved to “Chrono”, the left counter indicates 1/10 of a second and the right 1/100th of a second.

I only know this because I looked it up- its a clever system, and a nice step up from an ordinary quartz, but I’m not sure how intuitive the system is. On the bright side, the dial face is clean and uncluttered.

2) Linear System

In 2009 TAG Heuer released the Monaco LS- LS standing for “Linear System”. The watch uses a mixture of:

• A sliding disc with a red line at 3 o’clock to indicate seconds
• Date window at 12 o’clock that indicates todays date between the two vertical red bars
• Traditional Chronograph at 6 o’clock and 9 o’clock

Wow- there is a lot to look at here. The second disc I think is an interesting idea, but has to be harder to read that a traditional sweeping hand- so it fails the form over function test right away. The date window looks cool, but if I know that today is the 9th, then its a pretty good guess that tomorrow with be the 10th and yesterday was the 8th.

The other issue with this dial is  it gives the impression that the  “Calibre 12″ and “Automatic Chronograph” scripts have kind of been thrown in wherever there was space- problem is, there wasn’t any space. The Monaco LS is certainly a good looking watch, but is not a shining beacon of pure, clean design.

3) Caliper System

Probably the most interesting watch in the current TAG Heuer line up is the (deep breath) TAG Heuer Grand Carrera Calibre 36 RS2  Caliper Chronograph Ti2. With a name like that, its not hard to guess that this is right at the avant-garde end of the design pool.

So the watch looks great- but how do you read it?  Probably better to let TAG explain:

The dashboard is a stylish black 43mm dial designed for optimum readability and information. The spotlight feature is the exclusive Caliper Rotating Scale, an ingenious display mode marked by an oversize crown and red line at 10 o’clock that enables precise readings of 1/10th of a second — magnified 10X for rapid readability.

Not sure about “optimum readability”- but apparently it works by rotating the outer-bezel to indicate the elapsed 1/10th of a second. I’m sure I could work it out with the help of a few introductory classes. I guess that the disc set-up at 9 o’clock uses the same approach as the Monaco LS, but it is pretty hard to work out what’s going on.

Summary

There is not much doubt that the dilemma faced with these watches is this: How do you push forward the development of the chronograph movement but make sure that people know? Not much point being “avant-garde” if its all locked away behind a steel case-back. I admire TAG for continuing to innovate the design of its watches and the movements they use- but it is time to reign in the stylists.

Its also fair to note that these models represent the first time these “systems” have been used on production watches, so its normal that you want to make an high-tech design to get people interested in the work that has been done under the dial.

As these systems evolve in later models, it will be important for the designs to become more intuitive, more user-friendly and less cluttered. There are significant design achievements in each of these watches, but that’s no reason for the form to suffer in the process- different doesn’t mean better.

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