Gelfman IN-16 watch development

This retro-futuristic watch has a long story of birth. That story started in 2012. The task was to develop the case with the cyberpunk inspiration around authentic nixie tubes. Authenticity is coming from the Soviet era when these tubes of various design were used as displays to perform digital information.

Our legend was to come up with a product that could exist if we imagine that the USSR did not collapse. The whole styling of the watch was the combo of soviet: space rockets, architecture, and basic materials.

The tubes that we were using for this project are called IN-16 - glow discharge indicators from 1986. And we were asked to develop the case as slim as possible to sit on the wrist from 6,5 inches.

The height of each tube is 18 mm, weight 13 g. The durability of at least 5000 hours.

That is why we decided to focus on the design of two metal covers and a thin connection between them. The push-button sits on this connection.

The side panels from both sides of the tubes were done for the purpose of ventilation in the first stage of the development. But after some tech tests with the chips and board water resistance, we focused on the closed construction of the case.

Besides these side panels helped to get better proportions of the long case and made the tubes more visible.

We played a lot with the finishing of the case, taking into account that everything will be done by hand. That is why the windows around the tubes were polished, so even in switched off mode the look of the watch is having retro futuristic look.

The strap of the case is a continuation of the case but in different material. We played a lot with the ergonomy of the strap to get the right one.

Here you can see the difference between first stage of R&D and the final product.

You can check the videos on the Gelfman watch site

GPHG 2020 nominated project

We are happy to share with you the info that the project that we did together with Isotope watches. The model that we did is Goutte D'Eau Nordblad Special Edition. Check the link

As you can see the competitors are super strong and heavy in design and quality. We understand everything, but we cross our fingers and hope for good. If you want support us, we want to thank you!

The prize nominating ceremony will take place November 12, 2020. Here is web-site of the prize.

Titanium military Isotope

We were involved in the development of this project on military theme. It had to be simple and light.

We wanted to follow these values in the design of the case. One of the common solutions was to make narrow lugs, but the problem was that it looked very week and modern. The solution we made was this. See the picture…

The case is really small (just 40mm) and we wanted to make it also simple but filled with info. That is why we used the inner minute ring with flat top surface fulfilled with seconds indices. The numbers are working for both scales - minutes and seconds. For the depth effect we used sun brushed finishing of the top layer of the dial.

The case back is super simple but for better marketing and recognition we used “dropsOFwater” graphics.

So the result is here and soon will be released by isotopewatches.com

New Zelos Mako V3.

The new Mako V3 was released few weeks ago. We were working on this project, and this was very challenging to create one of the best-sellers in Zelos collection.

The first idea was to create slim and light version of the Mako (longfin Mako shark). In the new vision of the case, we left the same the length of the lugs that represent the fin of the shark. And for the reference of the indices we used their teeth, that are large and knife-shaped, without serrations or secondary cusps.

the picture belongs to http://www.emerald-vision.com

After numeral sketches and renders the pre-final render was done and we got this.

And even after this stage we got one week of work in “cleaning” and optimizing the design.