While sorting old project data we came across photos from 2023: our first attempts at designing watch dials ourselves. Back then a UV printer stood in the workshop, and we printed straight onto blank dials: colour fields, lettering, entire artworks.
We built the dials into purchased cases with automatic movements. They were experiments, not products. Here are six pieces from that time, exactly as they were made.
Graffiti artwork with our early lettering. The name was there, the watch around it was not.
A historic patent drawing as a dial. Automotive engineering never let go of us; you can still see it in the case design today.
A gift artwork printed straight onto the dial. Technically simple, but this is where the idea of the personal watch became tangible.
A full-surface artwork with printed indices. The print replaces the entire dial design here.
An artwork from a digital experiment. Not every idea from back then survived; the dial did.
An illustration as a dial: testing how finely the print resolves detail and colour gradients.
What remained
We took two things from that period. First: a designed dial turns every watch into its own piece, and the possibilities are practically unlimited. Second: even the best dial stays arbitrary when the case comes off the shelf. The dial was ours, the watch was not.
That is exactly where HexaCore begins: our own case, additively manufactured from titanium, with a surface that never repeats. The idea of building every watch as a one-off was already there in 2023. Today it stands on its own foundation.
The current pieces are in the gallery.