SMLT-1
Long story short. This story began in 2014 when, through the efforts of several very caring people, we brought this project to life. But everything remained at the Beta prototype stage. That year, with the finished prototype, I went to the Baselworld exhibition and showed it to several of my friends, who said that 47mm was too big for a watch. It was just a period of active decline in the popularity of watches over 42mm.
Over the past 10 years, this trend has led to the fact that the size of men's watches is 38-39 mm steel. This became a kind of new norm during the pandemic, when people closed at home appreciated their collections and wanted watches in the spirit of the 70s and 80s.
I drew these watches with thoughts of my grandfather and father, who for many years were a flight engineer and a pilot of civil aviation, respectively. And flew Tupolev planes: Tu 104 and Tu 134.
The core idea of this project was to have a spirit of airplane jet engine on your wrist. That gives you super power. The design and finishing of the dial makes you feel the rotation of the engine fan’s spinning blades and also represents the fairing glass lantern.
The design of the case inspired by the form of the Tu104 body. An interesting transition of the fuselage into the engine fairing is a characteristic element of this aircraft. The shape and color of the crown is the wheel of the front chassis.
The dial is a game of reflections on polished surfaces. It is not flat as usual dials, but has a conical shape. When looking at this dial, the user has the feeling of spinning engine blades, and the orange-copper color around the minute ring shows that the engine is working. In the dark, this part glows because there is a layer the Luminova. Another resemblance that made the dial of this architecture is as I said ealier the fairing glass lantern, that you can see on this video.
The design the strap inspired by the aircraft carrier deck. I found it interesting that there are 2 zones of the deck: for the takeoff runway (short) and for the landing runway (long). The strap has also 2 parts that are short and long, so I decided to use the same graphics on inside part of the strap. The outside part of the strap is a layout of the most significant part of the fuselage - top front window.
The prototype was made without the rubber strap.
