Nendo redesigns Tag Heuer sports watch to be more “classic”

Nendo has redesigned a contemporary Tag sports watch to take on more “antique” or “classical” qualities.

The Japanese consultancy has redesigned Swiss watch brand Tag Heuer’s Carrera range, renaming the new edition the Carrera Time Machine.

The design includes a black watch face, silver numbering and wristband and red watch hands.

It wanted to create a sense of “incongruity and strangeness” to the watch by keeping the face, case and wristband the same but changing the clock hands to a “more classical shape”.

The consultancy used a contrast of old and new in the design to “reinvent” the watch face by including a “wrong” or incongruous feature.

“It conjures up an image of having gone to a local traditional watchmaker to get a chronograph watch repaired, only to find they have put on a pair of vintage clock hands by mistake,” says the consultancy.

Nendo also designed the packaging for the watch, which takes inspiration from an “old book”, and comes with accompanying products also made by the consultancy.

These include a red bookmark and paper knife, which are in the shape of the “classical” clock hands on the watch, and a glass watch stand made by hand from an antique jar.

The shop display of the new watch also looks to echo an “old watchmaker’s workshop”, says the consultancy, with “tools and trinkets scattered around” the products.

It also includes “conventional” silver clock hands dangling from the ceiling, with one red “classical” clock hand among them, which aims to “stand out”.

The Tag Heuer Carrera Time Machine is currently only available to buy in Japan, at a price of ¥550,000 (£2971).