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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchFor watch designers Max Resnick and Emmanuel Gueit, a well-designed watch has to work as a whole: it should suit its purpose, feel right on the wrist, remain legible, and express a coherent identity. Their answers differ in emphasis—Gueit begins with personal appeal and aesthetics, while Resnick tests the design against its intended use—but both treat comfort and function as inseparable from visual decisions.
Their perspectives come from a conversation with Thomas Van Straaten published by Fratello on November 11, 2024. They offer a way to look closely at watches, not a survey of the market or a universal rulebook.
How do designers judge whether a watch works?
Emmanuel Gueit starts with the wearer’s response
Gueit’s first test is personal: does he like the watch, and can he imagine buying and wearing it? He then considers how it sits on the wrist and whether its appeal might last. That sequence puts immediate attraction and lived experience ahead of abstract rules.
Max Resnick starts with the whole design and its purpose
Resnick first considers the watch as a complete object, then asks whether it serves the use it was made for—especially if it is intended for a sport or activity. He names wearability, legibility, functionality, and fit with the brand as important tests. As he puts it, “wearability and functionality are essential to good design.”
The difference is useful rather than contradictory: one designer describes beginning with the experience of wanting and wearing a watch; the other emphasizes checking the design against its brief. Both bring the eventual wearer into the evaluation.
What makes watch proportions feel right?
Proportion is more than case diameter. The designers discuss the relationship among the case, lugs, thickness, and dial elements, as well as how the watch feels on the wrist. A case can look balanced in isolation yet feel awkward if its thickness or lug shape makes it sit poorly.
There is no universal size formula
Gueit rejects fixed rules for watch size and proportion. The right choice depends on the design and the effect it is meant to create. A proportion that suits one watch may not serve another.
Refinement happens through iteration
Resnick describes adjusting elements such as lug dimensions, case thickness, and dial layout as the design develops. The practical question is not whether each measurement follows a universal standard, but whether the relationships work together and remain comfortable on the wrist.
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How do typography and color shape a watch?
Typography sets tone, but must preserve legibility
Type on a dial helps establish tone and connect a watch to its brand. Gueit stresses respecting a brand’s visual identity, while allowing that a design might deliberately combine references from different eras. Resnick sees typography as a way to unify a collection or distinguish one model from another. In either case, lettering has to serve the dial rather than make the time harder to read.
Color can follow form—or lead it
Resnick generally develops a design in monochrome before using color and material variations to refine it. He allows for exceptions when color is central to a brand’s identity. Gueit describes color decisions as involving both brand identity and commercial considerations. Their accounts show that color is not merely decoration: its role depends on the design brief and the identity the watch needs to convey.
How do the designers view trends, vintage, and originality?
Their trend observations are personal opinions, not measurements of how common any style is. Gueit hopes watch design moves away from repeatedly borrowing familiar designs, particularly the integrated-bracelet sports-watch look. Resnick points to experimentation with sculptural forms, unusual ways of displaying time, natural materials such as stone dials, new finishes, and metal additive manufacturing.
Both recognize the appeal of vintage watches, but Resnick says he would rather introduce new ideas than make like-for-like reissues. The distinction is between learning from the past and relying on close repetition; it does not mean that every new design must reject historical influence.
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Gueit says aesthetics come first in his process. Once he has established the visual direction, he works on meeting functional requirements within it. Resnick describes a more iterative relationship: aesthetics and function inform one another as the design takes shape. He also notes that some projects begin with a functional need, a manufacturing technique, or a complication.
These are different starting points, not competing definitions of good design. A strong result must make its functional demands work with its appearance, even when one side of that relationship leads the process.
A practical way to read a watch design
The designers’ comments suggest a useful checklist for examining a watch. It is a set of lenses, not a product ranking:
- Purpose: Does the design make sense for the activity or role it is intended to serve?
- Fit and comfort: How do the case, lugs, and thickness affect the way it sits on a wrist?
- Legibility: Can you read the time easily, including with the chosen type and dial layout?
- Proportion: Do the case and dial elements feel balanced as a whole?
- Brand coherence: Does the watch express its maker’s identity, whether through continuity or deliberate contrast?
- Originality: Does it contribute a distinct idea, or depend mainly on familiar visual cues?
- Visual aging: Is its appeal likely to extend beyond the immediate moment?
- Function and aesthetics: Do practical requirements support the look, and does the look accommodate what the watch needs to do?
Examples mentioned in the conversation
The Fratello discussion associates Gueit with the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore and also mentions the Royal Oak, Nautilus, and Dennison. Other examples raised include Anoma, Toledano & Chan, Urwerk, VPC, and work by Martin Frei, Marie Boutteçon, and Sylvain Berneron. They serve as references in a design conversation, not as a ranked list or buying recommendations.
Resnick’s official watch-design page presents his practice and project examples, including TRASKA, Sylvain Pinaud, Apiar, Anoma, Kari Voutilainen, and William Wood. A portfolio listing alone does not establish that he designed every project shown.
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