Grand Seiko's "The Journey of Birch"
Probably obvious I'm a marketing nerd at this point. Still, I wanted to share this cool installation partnership between BCXSY (a Dutch design studio), and Grand Seiko displayed last month in Miami: https://grandseikogs9club.com/chronicle-9/design-miami-journey-of-birch/.
What do you all think of this display? Does Grand Seiko's leverage of natural inspirations convince you to care about their designs?
In my opinion, It'd be cool to see a brand like Hamilton, for example, use pop-up interactive displays connecting their watches to historical periods (ex., recordings of railroad timetables, wartime speeches, etc.). Shinola (yes, I know, more of a fashion brand) builds its retail locations in a similar vein through material choice, lighting, and product naming, attaching itself to the mid-century rustbelt.
Grew up with a family basement full of old Hamilton pocket watches and advertisements. Guess that shaped me more than expected 😅.
As a person working in the ad industry - this looks like trying too hard. I may be wrong, this may look amazing in real life, but in general going too far with this "nature inspired" dials is putting Seiko in weird spot. People may actually try to find logic behind every design decision they make, and in design logic is not the only king:) There is emotion, aesthetics, functionality, production limitations and etc. So, let's not go too deep into the logic behind a watch, otherwise we go into Jacob&Co situation.