Rolex’s communications agency approached me with an interesting problem – Rolex were asking for a new design system which could stretch across all their communication, but Rolex had a very tight aesthetic which left little latitude for innovation.
I had met Taras Wayner, who led the agency at R/GA when he joined to head up the Advertising discipline. He had seen my process of Brand Archeology from my Brand Development Practice at R/GA and he wondered if this process would discover a language which is already there.
The Rolex Agency team were delightful and I started to wade through reams of previous campaigns, communication, retails books, films and forgotten design systems. The most profound thing to me was how well versed each team member was on the Rolex product. They could see minute differences between each watch, they saw a hidden language.
As I uncovered more about the Rolex Brand, it was clear that the language of the product was a lineage that stretched throughout the companies history. When I presented my findings to the team – I said “Why are we inventing a language to communicate the product when we should be using the language of the product itself?”
When looking for a design language for Rolex communication it was imperative to not create a competing language but draw from the existing iconic design language of the product. Rolex already has a language, the language of the product. A language that customers are far more familiar with than the language of Rolex advertising.
Upon building the design system it became apparent that the process for transcribing the Brand Identity onto the surfaces of the product meant that the Wordmark, Logo and Typography were subtly different. Tampography, or pad printing needed different weights of line and contrast. Engraving, Enameling and Gemsetting created more open spacing. Differing materials with different tolerances built up a subtle language of distress and amorphism.
From detailed review, I realized that the Rolex Wordmark I knew wasn’t the corporate mark, but the inked logo on the dial. The Crown I had in my mind wasn’t the crisp angular mechanical drawing, but the smooth rounded condensed form. And as I studied the Typography I found out that my good friend Jonathan Hoefler had just released the font Decimal built from the subtleties and esoteric eclecticism of watch faces through time.
The last puzzle piece became the grid. I’d realized that watch face design became an exercise in concentricity. I was looking at a document about the Perpetual Movement which is at the center of Rolex’s superior quality and I realized that it was entirely dependent on Gravity.
The concept of Gravity became the pattern that pulled the system together. The new design system used Gravity to draw the eye toward the product, placing the perpetual movement at the center of the brand.