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DI: What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?

: Minimizing distractions and pairing down information to only the absolute necessary.

DI: What are your future plans for this award winning design?

: We have been working with Swiss manufacturers and suppliers and plan on launching a crowdfunding campaign in the coming months.

DI: How long did it take you to design this particular concept?

: We have been working on the timepiece design for the last 18 months.

DI: Why did you design this particular concept? Was this design commissioned or did you decide to pursuit an inspiration?

: I have always been interested in watches, this particular design started as a passion project and progressed into a product we hope to offer for sale.

DI: Is your design being produced or used by another company, or do you plan to sell or lease the production rights or do you intent to produce your work yourself?

: We intend to produce the design ourselves with our Swiss partners.

DI: What made you design this particular type of work?

: I've always loved watches, especially mechanical watches. Its great to continue working on them.

DI: Who is the target customer for his design?

: Our target market is design focused customers in the higher mid-level market.

DI: What sets this design apart from other similar or resembling concepts?

: Most aesthetically-focused watches are designed as fashion pieces intended to hit a lower entry price. As a result, competitive timepieces use lower quality materials throughout, mainly quartz movements and mineral glass crystals. Our design focuses on the hole in the market of design-focused watches and includes automatic swiss movements and sapphire crystals. Most other timepieces in the price range we are focusing on haven't meaningfully refreshed their designs in years. We are attempting to design a watch with a very unique look while still using a standard swiss movement. The most unique watches spend years and millions of dollars developing their own in house movements, and as a result the price of each watch goes up orders of magnitudes. We would like to change that trend.

DI: How did you come up with the name for this design? What does it mean?

: M1 stands for Model 1. We plan on expanding the line in the future into additional models.

DI: Which design tools did you use when you were working on this project?

: We use Rhino 3D as our CAD program and Keyshot for renderings and animations. We also use 3D printers for prototyping early in the process.

DI: What is the most unique aspect of your design?

: The display we have developed for telling time is located directly under the sapphire crystal. By using the optics inherent in sapphire we create the illusion the time is displayed directly on the surface of the crystal.

DI: Who did you collaborate with for this design? Did you work with people with technical / specialized skills?

: After the initial design phase we are now collaborating with partners in Switzerland for engineering and manufacturing.

DI: What is the role of technology in this particular design?

: CAD was integral in realizing this design, especially at the tolerances required in a watch.

DI: What are some of the challenges you faced during the design/realization of your concept?

: It was a long process to get to the final result. Just deciding on how to display time in the unique way we chose took a lot of perfecting.

DI: How did you decide to submit your design to an international design competition?

: I've wanted to submit to competitions for years, for some reason, this year and this product finally seemed like the right one to try.