During Watches & Wonders 2024, we sat down with the Chief Design Officer for IWC Schaffhausen, Christian Knoop to talk about his career, his role in the company, and of course, designing the new IWC Portugieser collection!
This article is written in partnership with IWC Schaffhausen
Christian Knoop has an envious role. As the Chief Design Officer at IWC Schaffhausen, he is largely responsible for not only how the watches look, but also the way the IWC brand is positioned in terms of thematics, look and feel. It’s a big job, but Christian seems right at home with the Schaffhausen brand, and like many people who work there, loves it with a passion!
During Watches & Wonders 2024, Chamath and I sat down with Christian to get his perspective on the new Portugeiser collection, what it is like working as the Chief Design Officer, and how he along with the team at IWC balances heritage and modernity in their designs. It was an interesting talk, and we got to see this passion first-hand, which we learned comes from his Industrial Design background.
“I must say, I’m trained as an industrial designer, and prior to working at IWC, I was working for a couple of brands and international agencies on many different products, be it electronics, furniture, or industrial machines, but no watches at all! When I got in contact with IWC, what spoke to me was the design legacy IWC had, such as working with big names like Gerald Genta, so there was a strong affinity with design and the strong design legacy in the brand. So I said OK! I would love to work with them!”
His answer to our question is interesting, and somewhat eye-opening as you don’t tend to associate watch brands generally with industrial design and engineering, which they quite obviously are, but it’s almost a secondary or afterthought, not the first thing that springs to mind. Design is in fact at the heart of IWC Schaffhausen, and everything they do is linked in some way to it – from the watches themselves to the actual Manufacture in Schaffhausen which was designed by IWC’s current CEO, Chris Grainger-Herr, who is an architect by trade himself. We wanted to delve a little deeper into Christian’s day-to-day, and what it means to be the Chief Design Officer for IWC.
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“It is a great opportunity really, and it means I have a responsibility for the entire look and feel of the brand and everything we do, with the watches, obviously, at the heart of the brand and everything we do. We also design basically all the corporate design, all the packaging, all the communication for the advertising, the boutiques and even the menu cards (pointing to the food and drink menu sitting in front of us in the IWC booth) and so the level of detail we can go into creating the entire expression of the IWC Schaffhausen brand is incredible, and still, I find this a great pleasure and a great challenge at the same time!”
From how Christian explains it, it does seem like a wide-scoping role and one that many would be envious of and would love to have. But this brings us to our next question, which we wanted to find out a little more about how his team goes about bringing the new Portugieser collection to life, and just how they balance the history and DNA of such an iconic piece for IWC with the needs of the modern watch buyer. From what Christian tells us, it is very much a balance of finding those design codes and looking to amplify them, but in a modern way.
“The Portugieser collection really represents the essence of the IWC brand, combining engineering and craftsmanship. The roots of the Portugieser go back to the 1930s when it was created as a wristwatch with marine chronometer precision, so taking a very robust and accurate pocket watch movement and putting this into a wristwatch. This resulted in it having a large diameter, while at the same time a very open and precise dial, so these aspects – instrument precision, pure design, and a very technical approach to clarity and readability are still the foundation of everything we do at IWC when it comes to watch design.”
“So, in that sense, the Portugieser was not only the foundation of a collection, but it was also very important to the DNA of the brand. Over the years, the Portugieser collection has evolved – integrating more and more complications, and more functions like chronographs, calendars, perpetual calendars and so on. But always with the idea in mind to have a very pure and reduced watch with the original instrument precision.”
But this balance comes with challenges for a watch and collection being launched in 2024…
“Now adding to a collection, like the Portugieser, every new relaunch remains a challenge, I mean you have to respect the past you have to remember to respect the DNA and the design codes of this particular product, but you also have to surprise your customers with something new. In this case, this year we launched the Eternal Calendar and added new colours and some new materials. In essence, we’ve had to balance all that out – those traditional elements and the novelty aspect.”
Now, Christian mentions the Eternal Calendar, which was one of the standouts of the show. We won’t go back into all the details again, as we talked more in-depth about it in our conversation with Markus Bühler – Associate Director of Watch and Movement Assembly At IWC, but we do want to delve a little into the design codes of the new Eternal Calendar, and how Christian and his team tackled this.
“There are a couple of answers to that. We are an engineering and design brand, and this is part of our culture, we are constantly challenging the status quo and we’re constantly questioning where we are in the design of our brand, where the voice of performance of our product is, and constantly trying to push the boundaries. This is not only the designers but it is also a culture we live and breathe in Schaffhausen itself. We consider calendars one of our core competence territories. When Kurt Klaus, our former head of watchmaking created the first fully synchronised Perpetual Calendar in 1985, back then on the Davinci line, this was a starting point. Later, we introduced annual calendars, complete calendars, moon phases moon and tide watches, and the Timezoner, so we see all this in the calendar competence and it all happened between 1985 and now.”
“Now we have again pushed the boundaries of these calendars by looking at the central functions. The calendar as such and the calendar programming. The current perpetual calendar watches we have now need an adjustment in the year 2100, which is an irregularity in the secular calendar. So you have to programme to overcome this. The new calendar instead of an adjustment in the year 2100 is programmed until the year 3999. There are very few products in the market that are capable of doing that!”
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IWC has taken the work Kurt Klaus did back in the 1980s back when the moon phase had an accuracy of being within one day every 122 years. IWC then built upon this with the current perpetual calendars, now having an accuracy of 1 day within 577.5 years, which has again been pushed to the limits in the Eternal Calendar, with a theoretical accuracy of just a one-day deviation in 45 million years. Technical prowess aside, we wanted to talk a little bit more about the watch design itself, the aesthetics not to mention the wearability of the piece. Christian explains…
“We also wanted to find an expression for the design – using a platinum case and treating the case design in a more dramatic and more impressive way by using a huge box glass on top, with the glass dial underneath. Not only that, we even gave it a box glass on the back to visually slim down the watch and give it a very airy and very dramatic look!”
“The dimensions are surprisingly comfortable, yes, it is a large watch, it’s 44-millimeter and it is platinum, but using this new case construction, the watch becomes lighter, the watch becomes smoother with soft glass and becomes more wearable. Also, we have used this technology as a kind of signature element for the entire new collection, so the new perpetual calendars use the same construction. The glass is not domed as much as the Eternal Calendar, but we use the same principles: slimming down the case ring and using box glass in the front and back. This is also the same for the Portugieser automatic 42mm and 40mm pieces, they use the same principle.”
And speaking of the new Portugieser collection, the colours this year are fantastic and IWC seemed to have nailed them all the while linking them back to their theme – “A Tribute To Eternity”. For those not aware, the colours on the Portugiesers represent different parts of the day with the Silver moon, Morning Dew, Horizon Blue, Dune and Obsidian. We delve into this a little deeper with Christian…
“It’s a combination between strategy and design. When we started working on this collection we said “OK, we can’t re-work the collection without introducing some new colour, because at the end, when they’re on display, you have to see that there is something new, and the colour will deliver that visual impact. So we were seeking colours that would combine a certain novelty aspect with the variability in the understatement which is part of the Portugieser line. We didn’t want to go into lime green and purple for example, they just needed to have the timeless aesthetics and the classiness that fit the Portugieser collection. So we said OK, why don’t we use the cycle of the day? It is the guiding idea that connects the new colours, starting from the Silver Moon, Morning Dew, to the Horizon Blue, and the warm afternoon light for the Dune and then the Obsidian for the night.”
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But IWC have actually gone one step further than this as they have incorporated the moon, tides, and even the day/night indicator on the Portugieser Hand-Wound Tourbillon Day & Night in Obsidian so according to Christian, “there’s a lot of calendar and planet observation involved in the story!”
As a collection, the new Portugieser range really stands out, which was one of our first thoughts heading into Watches & Wonders this year. While other brands brought out single pieces, and many of these were high-complications, there were very few that looked at the collection as a whole with a consistent theme running through it. IWC did this from the 40mm Portugieser, all the way to the Portugieser Perpetual Calendars and then added in their very own high complication piece in the Eternal Calendar. It ticked a lot of boxes for a lot of people. Christian elaborates on this line of thinking and how he and IWC tackled the design codes of the Portugieser this year.
“The Portugieser in a sense gives a certain direction, while other collections like the Pilots Watch for example allow a little bit more room for interpretation, to go either very vintage or to go super technical and modern. In the Portugieser you have to respect that it is more consistent and is going in a continuous and timeless direction. We look at the Portugieser as still a very contemporary watch, and not a kind of traditional watch, which is why we did this booth here (at Watches & Wonders) which is inspired by the architecture of people like Mies van der Rohe. It has a mid-century architecture that has incredible modernity about it. With this style of architecture, even if the buildings are 70 years old, you don’t look at them like old buildings, they are still modern buildings. This is the same connection we want to draw in order to evolve the Portugieser. It’s not like people look at this and say, Oh, this is a traditional watch! No, it should be received as an incredibly modern watch that still hasn’t lost its crispness and modernity.”
Looking at the pieces, they do not look like vintage watches at all, but you can see where they’ve drawn their inspiration from. But the big question now is, what is next for Christian and the IWC Portugieser collection?
“We will put more emphasis on more wearable sizes and smaller sizes in many collections over the coming years and this trend will definitely continue, also the trend of complications will also continue, but I can’t give much more away than that!”
We have a bit of a laugh about this. As much as we would love to know all of IWC’s secrets and upcoming releases over the next few years, this is something Christian is going to make us wait for with bated breath, so we change tac and ask, what he finds most enjoyable about his job.
“I have the pleasure to have a fantastic job, and I meet a lot of very passionate and very inspiring people, both my colleagues in Schaffhausen but also with many business partners with many customers. We have fantastic customers who really love mechanical watches and have an incredible passion for watchmaking which I still find very motivating, especially when you get compliments from these people who know more about watches than me! But if you ask me as a creative, then for me, the early part of the creation process is always the most exciting part, this is when you really create the essence of the product, the signature of that collection and this is really what I find the most creative and the most interesting in the design process.”
Again, as we’ve discovered time and time again, it is the people that make the job. When we spoke to Christian’s colleague, Markus Bühler, he said a similar thing, he enjoys the people and the connections he makes inside IWC as well as outside the business. Christian then talks about the motivation within his job and what inspires him to keep doing it, which is the people and the processes he manages to take a product from start to finish; “The challenge is basically keeping the momentum and taking other people along with your vision, inspiring them and motivating them to contribute in the same way as you would do it!”, I think this is something that we can all relate to, well as least I can!
And with that, we finish the interview just as the drinks arrive we ordered off the IWC menu card Christian talked about at the start of the interview. It’s insightful and another person with a different background and perspective on both IWC Schaffhausen, the industry and watches as a whole, and helps us to see it through their eyes, and why they do what they do.
This article was written as part of a commercial partnership with IWC. Watch Advice has commercial partners that work with us, however, we will never alter our editorial opinion on these pieces, a fact that is clearly communicated to the brands when entering into a commercial arrangement.
