Everyone is a critic…

I am not a designer, nor do I play one on TV. I like design. I appreciate design. I love walking through an IKEA showroom and marveling at what Swedes can do in small spaces using only black and white as a color palette. (And I love the names given to these products. Swedish and Dutch have the most humorous tones to the American ear. England still takes the prize for silly sounding place names, there is a Giggleswick for g-d’s sake. I say this as someone who used to live in Pennsylvania wherein lie the towns of Intercourse and Blue Ball.)

Which brings me to the new Islander/TGV collaboration, the Rangemaster Mechanical, a dog’s breakfast of a new release. I was surprised at my initial reaction which was “You have to be kidding?” I was lukewarm on the original Rangemaster. I liked the TGV/Lorier Safari collaboration. This one left me cold.

Field watches are not my favorite, but I appreciate their utility and I have always had at least one in the collection. Unlike divers, they are tool watches that can easily be used in the manner that they are intended to be used. There are no “desk” field watches. They should be easy to read, have some water resistance, and take a scratch or bump. They should be trail ready.

The specs on the Rangemaster Mechanical are fine. I like the case.  I don’t quibble with the price. It seems reasonable. Where I have a problem is with the dial. Where to begin?

Design is a series of choices. The right decisions in the right sequence will yield something of merit. These choices can be edited and refined in later editions. The modern Rolex Explorer is a result of these gradual refinements. In one-off collaborations there is a greater need to get things right in one take. There may never be another chance to get it right.

Here, the choice was to keep the original Rangemaster 3, 6, and 9, and chapter ring in their same proportions and font. This is an easily defendable position to take. It must look like what the designer wants a “Rangemaster” to look like. In making that decision it forced other decisions as well. Those numerals are large with a distinct flattened effect. The lumed indices are fairly large also. This combination leaves precious little real estate in the middle of the dial to play with.

Clearly the decision to include 24-hour Arabic numerals was preordained. This is a classic field watch element that can be traced back to military issue time pieces. The size of the numerals and font is a design choice. The fonts don’t have to match as many generations of Timex Expeditions and Weekenders can attest. The size does matter, however. Here they are larger and do not contrast well with the outer numerals. The eye cannot easily distinguish the two which leads to momentary confusion. The dial looks too crowded. Compare this to almost any Sinn (except the 856 UTC, ugh).

Another decision was to include both logos and the red Islander under the six. Pick one, either the red Islander or the logo, but not both. I would have chosen the red Islander and kept it as it is. Having both logos in the inner ring also disturbs the symmetry of the ring. We are all a little OCD and the eye always catches an imperfect circle. The Islander logo is unnecessary with the red below the six. I would move the TGV logo to the 6 or 12 and eliminate the numeral. Without the Islander logo it might be fine as it is. I would reduce the size of the indices, handset (especially the hour hand), and numerals by 5-10%, and make the inner ring smaller still. The first rule of thumb for any field watch sold by Islander under its own name should be: Is this better looking than the Bertucci watches that we already sell?

Sometimes it is burdensome to have opinions on everything, even watches not designed with you in mind and that you will never buy.