Designers: YOY, Tokyo, Japan
Manufacturer: Rado Uhren AG., Lengnau, Switzerland
Artistic instead of artificial intelligence: our collaboration with the Japanese design duo YOY
(Lengnau, Switzerland – October 2020) In the middle of the digital age, the Japanese design duo YOY is giving one of our best-known faces an update that is as contemporary as it is analogue. The True Square Undigital combines two real design icons. The angular bars of the digital display meet the square Rado ceramic watch. But not everything is as it seems at first glance… This watch is truly smart. And absolutely undigital.
The digital display and the square Rado ceramic watch: both were the epitome of futuristic designs in the 1980s. YOY likes to use such well-known greats and gives them a completely new meaning, creative, clever and humorous. Just like its vision of the Rado True Square. The Undigital plays with the distinctive shapes of the seven-segment display – the classic face of a digital watch – and transfers them to the analogue time display with hands. Luminous white Super-LumiNova clearly stands out, both during the day and in the dark, from the matt black dial, which has a completely puristic appearance.
The unique high-tech ceramic case of the True Square provides the appropriate setting and, thanks to its innovative monobloc construction, is ultra-flat at only 9.6 mm high. The matt black PVD-coated titanium back and the smooth, matt black high-tech ceramic bracelet also contribute to the low weight of the watch.
Style icons, contemporary design talents, innovative manufacturing technologies and high-tech materials that impress with a unique feel, durability and scratch resistance: the Rado True Square Undigital combines everything that makes Rado what it is. The watch is driven by a modern mechanical movement whose automatic winding is not only a work of art in itself but also a role model in terms of sustainability – in other words, completely undigital.
Ceramic is an inorganic, non-metallic material that is consolidated by a firing process at high temperature. This sought-after material has a long history: the word ‘ceramic’ is derived from the Greek word ‘keramos’, and the first use of bowls made from fired clay dates back to around 9000 BC.
The biocompatible high-tech ceramic we use in our watches today was developed in the second half of the 20th century. What sets this material apart is its high-purity starting materials (e.g. aluminium oxide, zirconium oxide, silicon nitride) in powder form with a perfectly uniform grain size. It is an extremely pure and finely calibrated artificially produced substance. Its advantage compared to conventional ceramics: in contrast to porous, fragile porcelain, high-tech ceramic is a very compact, high-density material. What’s more, it does not have to be specially enamelled to achieve a high-gloss finish.
