Hands Up! Watch Design Analysis

The most dynamic element of a watch is its hands. The hands move and change the aspect of a watch through each day. Although a dial can tantalize, the interaction between hands and dial elements is what makes great watches fantastic and cheap watches ugly.

Consider this Swiss Army brand watch:
Simple, clean, elegant, yes? The contrast between the black hands and white dial is connected by the black numbers. A simple red bezel provides sufficient accent.

This Poljot also has a simple dial:
Why does this design not work as well as the previous? First, it is a chronograph, and the extra subdials add more elements to the dial making it more cluttered. That is not why it is less elegant, though. Look at the hands. They are thick, ungainly, and the shiny silver-colored main hands do not contrast sufficiently with the dial. The white sweep seconds hand does contrast, but it is too obvious with its white stem and red triangle at the end. It seems added on rather than part of a unified design. The 9 o'clock subdial hand looks better in itself because the thin white hand elegantly contrasts the black dial and correlates to the white running seconds marks.

This Vagary is colorful, but very difficult to read:
The design seems to work by its sheer confusion of colors and shapes, but it becomes tiresome to view after a brief time.

Because watches use a stationary dial and moving hands, the use of contrasting and accenting colors becomes key to legibility. At the same time, there needs to be a match between the shape and width of hands that is proportionate to the respective dial markings.

Wide hands and narrow hour markers usually look odd, though sometimes it does work well:
The vintage Heuer Autavia "Orange Boy" uses hands that are orange and are wider than its dial markers, but legibility is excellent. The orange bands on the 3 o'clock subdial relate the color, as does the orange sweep seconds hand. The contrasting dark black and grey subdial colors add to the effect.

Silver hands are popular on many watches:

Silver hands on the Seiko above are elegant and slim with a very slight taper. They match the dial hour markers perfectly and the hour hand reaches just to the marks while the sweep minutes hand just covers them. The matching white sweep seconds and subdial minutes hands relate to each other and are highly visible, yet unobtrusive. The contrasting blue hours subdial hand (underneath the white minutes subdial hand) is close enough to the blue behind it to blend in and yet different enough to be legible.

The Tissot PR516 Sea Star and TAG-Heuer Monaco re-edition both use shiny silver hands to great effect, too. Note how the Tissot utilizes slim, elegant proportions while the TAG-Heuer is the opposite, blocky and bold. Both watches use three-dial chronographs and both could be very busy dials, yet each is extremely effective in balance and proportion so that neither design seems overwhelming.
By contrast, the Tissot Sea Star above is both malproportioned and uses color poorly. The silver hands are thinner than the dial markers and do not extend far enough to seem proportioned well. The smoke-silver dial does not offer enough contrast to make the hands very legible, something that is exacerbated in direct sunlight. Matching silver dial markings do not help legibility.
This Rousseau has a busy dial with poorly-proportioned hands that are complex in shape. The lack of contrast and excessive dial markings makes this a difficult watch to read and an aesthetically confusing piece.

White hands are also popular, especially with the ever-common black dial. The classic Omega Speedmaster is an example of how multiple dial elements can be rendered with simple elegance:
Notice the hands. They are really quite dull in themselves, yet they work fantastically well with the rest of the dial design. How? First, note that there are no hour numbers, just luminescent strips that are ever-so slightly narrower than the hands. Straight hands might be boring, but the luminescent stripe in the middle of each makes them seem thinner, and the very slight taper at the end exudes classically understated elegance. The sweep seconds hand is the epitome of classic, simple, understated design. Notice also how the subdial hands are simple, thin, and use no counterweight shapes.
This Tissot Navigator above is one of my favorite designs. It uses similar hour and minutes hands to the Speedmaster, but the sweep seconds and sweep minutes hands are red. It could be confusing but they relate to the red subdial hand at 6 o'clock, just as the main hands relate to the running seconds at 9 o'clock. Furthermore, the sweep seconds hand is not completely red—half of it is black. Furthermore, the sweep seconds hand is an elegant needle-shaped design that draws attention to its tip rather that its body. The Concorde-shaped minutes sweep hand is effective for similar reasons, though its shape necessarily must contrast every other sweep hand. Notice that there are no markings inside the hour markers (no numbers again!) and the tachymeter scale is outside the main watch face. Complexity borders simplicity, and contrasting colors set off each important element.

The ARSA below uses a combination of white hands, matching and contrasting colors, and proportioned hands and dial markers to create a vibrant yet balanced design:
Note how the shapes around each subdial suggest inward movement and are accented by dark blue strips. My favorite touch on this watch are the block-center subdial hands.

Black hands on black dials can be elegant:
The Vostok above uses white inserts to set off its black hands. A simple dial helps it all tie together. The vintage Heuer Pasadena uses white elements on black hands to create legibility. The hands themselves are quite plain, but the contrasts between different elements of the face add up to an extremely legible design that is also uniquely classic.

Below is an example of how changing hands can change a watch. I bought this Revue Thommen Airspeed chronograph because it had many wonderful elements, but the hands were terrible. The watch uses a Lemania 5100 movement, famous for its sweep minutes hand that is both unique and highly readable. The original sweep minutes hand on the Airspeed was malproportioned, with a very large (and unnecessary) counterweight that makes the dial cluttered; a boring, awkward triangle pointer at the end exacerbates this ungainly design. The sweep seconds hand is interesting, and the hour and minutes hands are nice, but the subdial hands are difficult to read. These short, stubby subdial hands are also boring.
I took some spare, used Omega hands and, with a little white paint, created something much more refined and readable:
The interaction between watch hands and watch dials is crucial to a balanced design. These are elements to seek when looking for a watch that will remain useful and valuable after one design trend has passed and another takes its place.