#facer.io

Another watch face!

This one is based on the Raketa Polar model that was originally designed for Soviet explorers and workers in the Arctic in 1970s. It does not attempt to be a duplicate of any specific model (the polar bear is just some royalty-free clip art I found, and Raketa doesn’t make ana-digi models), but I do think it captures at least some of the late 60s aesthetic of some of the originals.

Grand complication watches sometimes have this weird tendency to look a little cartoonish. They are usually tremendously expensive, due to being some of the most extreme manifestations of clockwork engineering in existence. It doesn’t quite make sense to try to duplicate on a smartwatch because you can add apps as you wish; I could pony up for an upgrade to add pro features like a chronograph or color customization, but why spend the extra money to access features I can download as apps? (Besides, I can just learn to do standard Android designs anyway.)

At some point I realized that a good number of my Facer.io creations are essentially functional shitposts, and none more so than the R-Shock, which is based on the Casio G-Shock GA2100, which in turn has been nicknamed among watch collectors as the CasiOak due to its geometrical similarity to the immensely more expensive Audemars Piguet Royal Oak. Except... there’s no octagon in my watch face. Oh well.

There’s only so many ways I can combine the features of the Royal Oak and the GA2100. I think this is not a bad effort, although the “tiles” are significantly larger and less detailed than AP’s. And this does tone down some of the Casio’s blockiness without really trying to precisely copy the appearance of the display.

I have this thing for weirdly convoluted puns that only I will ever understand. The Nomos Lambda’s name led me to reference a classic text on the Lisp programming language because that’s just where my brain goes.

I do like what I’ve seen of Nomos’ products, even though I can’t imagine ever spending $11K on a watch, and if someone bought me one, it would be kind of a white elephant because I’d be terrified to ever wear it. There is simply no way a mechanical watch can match the functionality of a digital watch at the same price point, much less a smartwatch. So... why not make my own?

It’s not an exact replica. I couldn’t get the battery indicator to work the same way. I didn’t try to copy Nomos’ trademarks and I added the digital bits because I just don’t have the patience to read the hands a lot of the time. But I think I’m going to keep using it on and off for a while.

I can imagine a very limited therapeutic case for these kinds of one-handed, low-precision watches, but the watches that inspired this face are neither inexpensive nor particularly luxury watches; they’re about $300 a pop and are the horological equivalent of a NoPhone, except more expensive and more pretentious. They seem to exist only to give the vapidly smug a way to tell you how chill they are and you aren’t.

My new watchface design!

You are a student at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and want the expensive watch on your wrist to represent your House: Ravenclaw? Well, you have to look no further then because this is the watch face for you.

Go check it out!