I want to talk about a watch brand – hot on the heels of yesterday’s post about my Apple Watch. Not because it has anything to do with client work, but because it says something about design that I think we forget too often.
Mr Jones Watches is a small watchmaker based in London. They have been going since 2007, and every watch is designed and put together by hand in one of their two London workshops. They are not cheap. They are not the most practical thing you could put on your wrist. And that is sort of the point.
A watch that borrows from road signs
I own two of theirs. The first is the M1, designed by Margaret Calvert. If that name means nothing to you, she is the designer behind the road signs you drive past every day in the UK. The dial takes its shapes straight from that system. It is a small, clever bit of reuse, taking something you already know without thinking about it, and putting it somewhere new.
A monster, a spaceman, and nothing else to justify it
The second is the Monster Melter 3000. It shows a spaceman shooting a tentacled alien. The ray gun is the minute hand. The severed tentacle is the hour hand. There is no deeper meaning here. It is not solving a problem. It exists because someone thought it would be fun to build, and that was reason enough.
-
- The Monster Melter 3000
-
- The M1 watch
Practical was never the point
If you wanted a practical watch, you would buy a plain digital one and be done with it. Mr Jones Watches never tried to compete on that. What they are selling is the idea that design can just be fun, with no other job to do.
I still wear an Apple Watch most days, because it is useful, plain and simple. But when I am out and want a watch to be seen in, I reach for one of these instead. Two watches, two different jobs. One is there to be useful. The other is there because it makes me smile when I look at it.
Other designers already seem to know this
I have not had many clients push back on the idea of fun in design. It is other designers who seem to have this dialled in already, like it is a founding belief rather than an afterthought. Watching a brand build a whole identity around it is a good reminder that fun is allowed to carry the same weight as usefulness. It does not need a business case to justify it.
An honest trade-off, not a footnote
None of this comes free. Mr Jones Watches will tell you themselves that their watches are not the easiest to read at a glance. They are not for everyone, and they know it. I think that is worth saying plainly rather than skating past it. Choosing fun over ease of use is a real trade-off, and a brand that owns that earns more trust from me than one that pretends there is no cost at all.
The whole point
I cannot make this point enough. Somewhere along the way, a lot of design decided that being taken seriously meant being sensible. Mr Jones Watches did the opposite, and fifteen-odd years on, it is still working. That is worth remembering the next time a bit of fun feels like it needs defending.
