Dezeen promotion: Swiss watch brand Rado has teamed up with designers around the world to create special editions of its True Square watch. Here we round up five of them.
Rado's automatic True Square watch is made from the company's signature high-tech ceramic material.
The rounded square case and bracelet are both made from the material using injection moulding to create a distinctive, durable watch with a warm, sensual feel against the wearer's skin.
Rado has worked with a host of different designers around the world to create special editions of its True Square watch.
The brand teamed up with British designer Tej Chauhan, Italian design studio Formafantasma, Japanese studio YOY, and Indian artists Thukral and Tagra to create watches that were unveiled last year through a series of videos and talks during Rado Design Week, a week-long collaboration between Dezeen and Rado.
This year, the brand worked with Chinese graphic designer Yuan Youmin to create a special edition True Square watch that was unveiled at Design Shanghai.
Read on to find out more about the five watches.
True Square Tej Chauhan
British designer Tej Chauhan played with pop-culture visions of the future to create this sci-fi-inspired version of the True Square watch.
Chauhan took inspiration from movies like A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner and Moon to develop this design language. This is most apparent in the watch face, where silver-coloured concentric circles and blue indexes create a visually intricate display.
Find out more about the watch ›
Watch a video interview with Tej Chauhan ›
True Square Formafantasma
Italian design duo Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of Formafantasma referenced the closed pocket watches of centuries past for their collaboration with Rado.
The minimal True Square Formafantasma timepiece features a small opening on the front to tell the time, reviving a design feature of many traditional pocket watches, which feature a small window on the front of the case so the time can be viewed without opening it.
Find out more about the watch ›
Watch a video interview with Formafantasma ›
True Square Undigital
Tokyo-based designers Naoki Ono and Yuki Yamamoto of studio YOY created a watch that is analogue in function but has the appearance of a digital watch.
The hands of the watch include white bars usually seen in the seven-segment displays of digital watches. The bright white hands against the black watch face create a bold aesthetic akin to the designs that dominated digital watch design in the 1980s.
Find out more about the watch ›
Watch a video interview with YOY ›
True Square Over The Abyss
Indian artists Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra created a True Square watch called Over the Abyss, which features multiple overlapping colourful hands.
The watch shows the local time superimposed on a range of their time zones via 18 different hour hands and 19 minute hands. The back of the watch features an artwork by the designers that resembles a pixellated video game.
Find out more about the watch ›
Watch a video interview with Thukral and Tagra ›
True Square True Heart
Chinese graphic designer Yuan Youmin drew from a traditional Chinese measuring instrument called a steelyard to create this watch.
Steelyards work by using a sliding counterweight to counterbalance the load of an object placed in a tray at the end of a rod to indicate its weight. The watch has gold hour markings that were informed by the dot graduation marks on a steelyard rod.
Find out more about the watch and watch a video interview with Yuan Youmin ›
Partnership content
This article was written by Dezeen for Rado as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.