By Kien Lee
Having already won the Red Dot Award and Grands Prix du Design Award, the design collaboration of the Rado True Square x Tej Chauhan between the Swiss watchmaker Rado and the British industrial designer Tej Chauhan have scored a third win, with the Good Design Award.
GOOD DESIGN™ is considered the oldest and most famous design prize programme worldwide. It is organized every year by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and honours products whose design takes new paths and transforms existing borders. The trade-marked award was founded in Chicago in 1950 by design pioneers Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, and Edgar Kaufmann Jr., among others
The timepiece combines Tej Chauhan’s emotional form language with Rado’s mastery of materials. The design inspiration came from pop culture’s timeless visions of the future. For his personal interpretation of a “near future”, Tej Chauhan has found an ideal partner in Rado.
Tej Chauhan is an award-winning British industrial designer known for his “emotive industrial design”: shape, colour and material are used strategically to create objects that bring joy. In his offices in London and Helsinki, a team of creative specialists works on a wide range of media and disciplines in the areas of industrial design, product development, creative brand strategy and future studies.
Working on the platform that is the Rado True Square, the new iterative piece has been given an eye-catching case made from matt yellow high-tech ceramic and enhanced by a colour-matched strap fashioned from cushion-shaped elements in yellow leather and connectors made from high tech ceramic.
The matt black dial with concentric circles backgrounds high-contrast white and red hands, which are powered by a state-of-the-art automatic movement. The date is displayed at 3 o’clock in a typeface designed by Tej Chauhan. The artistic choice of blue indexes between 9 and 12 are an indication of the time of day "when things start moving," either in the morning at the office or evenings on the town.
With its futuristic aesthetic this watch is a perfect example of the combination of Rado's innovative strengths and a contemporary product designer’s wealth of ideas – a liaison that continues to inspire design experts and many others.
