Watches: Swatch

Back in 1984 when Howard Jones and his rack of synthesizers were inspiring my classmates to bleach and feather their hair, and girls started taking their fashion cues from Molly Ringwald movies, the fashionistas of my elementary school were discovering Swatches, sometimes wearing two on the same wrist, or using them as pony tail bands.

In my Levi jacket, spangled with enough Van Halen pins to pass for a Spanish general, I would have none of it. For a quarter of a century, I've associated Swatch watches with kids in my sixth grade glass who were affluent enough to be trendy.

It's taken me 26 years, but I finally have a great appreciation for Swatch as a brand. (Certainly a much stronger brand than Van Halen turned out to be.)

Cool things about Swatch:

• Launched in early 1983, they were smart enough to realize they needed a brand. They knew if they were just another Swiss watch, their deep-pocketed competition would demolish them.
• Switzerland was known for producing the best watches in the world, but they were also the most expensive. In the early 1980's, if you wanted a good watch for under a couple hundred bucks, you bought a Japanese Seiko. Swatch changed all that. (In fact, Swatch was short for "second watch" - the one you'd wear when you didn't want to scratch up your $10,000 piece.)
• Early on, Swatch started partnering with artists like Keith Haring to build their design cred.
• They remained true to their meticulous Swiss heritage, first developing the flattest watch in the world, and then figuring out a way to reduce the pieces needed from 91 to 51 without losing any accuracy.
• Today, the Swatch Group is the world's largest watch company and owns the following brands: Omega, Tissot, Mido, and the watch lines of Calvin Klein and Tiffany & Co.

There are so many watch companies in Switzerland, and so many have zero branding acumen. It's not surprising to me that the one who understood the power of branding could rise from start-up to market goliath in less than 30 years.

Swiss Navy

Pretty cool branding. Cracks me up.

A Tale of Two Cities

Digging through some old files I found another old time-y postcard from a few years ago. I guess I've been collecting these things for a while without realizing it.

Watches: Flik Flak

The last few watches I've featured have been out of my price range by $1000 to $65,000. So I'm taking a break from crazyland to feature the three Flik Flak watches we gave our kids for Valentine's Day.

My wife introduced me to Flik Flak. They're the children's line of Swatch (kind of the Land of Nod to Crate & Barrel). Honestly, they seem more Old Navy than Swiss precision machines to me. But our kids were pretty thrilled with them.

More Old Time-y Illustrations

A few more in a series. I really like the Geneva one. Wish I could find it poster-sized.

Large bills

This is some of the money I won for the Rica Hotels contest.

I find it interesting that the larger the denomination, the larger the bill. The largest barely fit in my wallet.

I find it even more interesting that the Swiss have a 1000 franc bill - the equivalent of having a $1000 bill. Maybe it's designed not to fit into a standard wallet as a reminder that most people shouldn't be walking around with 1000 franc bills to begin with.

Geneva Rips Off the Eames

I like cities that display art in public places. Chicago does it. And so does Geneva. Right now, there's a sidewalk exhibition along the Bergues Bridge downtown.

I'm sure a lot of people think it's cool. But if you're at all familiar with "Powers of 10" by Ray and Charles Eames, you'll know it's just a blatant rip off. Which makes it less cool.

The Bergues Bridge version isn't as interesting or as comprehensive as the original, but at least you don't have to put up with the soundtrack or the voiceover that sounds exactly like a guy wearing a short-sleeved, button down shirt with horned-rimmed glasses and a pocket protector.

Unlike the Eames version, this one goes into the man's testicle. Ouch.

Sperm cells are apparently more interesting than strands of DNA.

(There's a crossover point mid-bridge where we go into the woman to see her ova before pulling slowly back to outer space.)

Despite being a rip-off, it's pretty cool to look at these panels and then look up to see you're actually there - something the original film doesn't offer. Unless, of course, you're watching it during a picnic near Lake Michigan. (I once saw Coldplay in the United Center, and they showed a clip of "Powers of 10" on the screen behind them, which comes pretty close.)

Gruyere Illustrated

We recently had family in town and took them to one of our favorite Swiss spots - Gruyere, about 80 minutes away from Geneva.

I picked up a couple postcards while I was there. I love old timey illustrations like this. It's what people did before the Canon Powershot.

I'm also a big fan of old tour posters. I love photography, but you just can't get a shot like this unless there's a giant ladle floating in the sky.

Minarets, no. Cross on flag, okay.

More racist, jingoistic, xenophobic graphic design from the lovable UDC. These posters are a rally for a law that would make it illegal to build minarets in Switzerland. (Especially, black and foreboding minarets.)

All three major languages. Apparently, minarets aren't a concern among the Romansch-speaking population.

(Apparently, an extra "p" is the German equivalent of an exclamation point.)

You can see more madcap adventures of UDC graphic design on this post.

When good design gets in the wrong hands.

A couple years ago, Switzerland's largest political party, the Swiss People's Party (UDC in French and Italian, SVP in German) proposed a plan to deport immigrant families if their children were convicted of a violent crime, drug offense or benefit fraud. So they ran these ads:


It simply says, "For more security."

That was before I arrived, but I've heard the non-UDC Swiss went nuts. The UDC (which controls Switzerland's justice ministry) was called racist, xenophobic, and compared to the Nazis. Seriously, could you imagine what would happen if a major political party ran ads like these in the States?

There are reform elections coming up, and the UDC are currently running these ads:

The ad asks, "Open the door to abuse? Free movement of Romanians and Bulgarians? No."

So the UDC seems to have a pretty clear brand message, and they're not worried about speaking their mind. And they do some pretty compelling graphics. Of course, with the swastika and continuing the Iron Cross, the Nazis had a pretty good handle on graphic design, too.

Compelling design and brand consistency has real power. I wish more people and organizations with worthwhile messages understood this.