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[PuristS]
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Conversations with Morten Linde - part 1

Conversations with Morten Linde – part 1

ML=Morten Linde
PP=PuristSPro (Dr M. Teillol-Foo)

PP: When I first heard about you and Linde Werdelin, I was already a fan of the Bang & Olufsen hi-fi that you helped design; I have both the Beosound 9000 and the Beosound Century.  How did your design journey bring you to Linde Werdelin?

ML: I owned my own design studio for about 15 years before forming Linde Werdelin. I designed everything from stereos to telephones to watches, for other companies; but I never had the opportunity to create the whole story. It is a fuller experience to see a product through from beginning to end. Before Linde Werdelin, I was only involved with the design process. While at Bang & Olufsen, I had the opportunity to work under the great David Lewis, and I learned a lot about design before going out on my own. For the Linde Werdelin products, we are involved with the execution of the manufacturing as well as the design.

Prototype Linde Werdelin SpidoSpeed Chronograph size compared with PuristSPro All-Black Rescue (42mm) watch

PP: Before we get into the Baselworld 2011 novelties and the new products, there are some miscellaneous mysteries that have to be answered. What happened to the Oktopus model? After that 82-piece Oktopus Tattoo edition, has it been discontinued? There are collectors who want to know how you choose the numbers for the limited editions. Why are some editions of 29 or 51 or 82 or 88 or 222 pieces? Some have speculated that someone in Linde Werdelin was born in 1951 or that the numbers have to be divisible by 22….er…..except for the two numbers (29 and 51) that cannot be so.

ML: For me, all your questions and their answers are quite logical because we are the ones making the decisions but I also understand that when they are not necessarily all communicated, then, it’s kind of a mystery. Where did the Oktopus line disappear to? Is it coming back or is it dead? I’m sure that many questions will be answered during our conversations.

The 22 and 222-piece limited editions are to reinforce the message about the power of two (watch plus instrument).

As Asia is currently our strongest market, ‘The One’ classic re-edition had 88 pieces.

The Oktopus Tattoo was a play on the Greek number ‘okto’ (8) and the last syllable of ‘tattoo’ (2) – 82.

The moonphase watch was limited to 29 pieces as the lunar cycle is close to 29 days.

The ladies’ ‘The White Watch’ was issued in 51 pieces because that is the proportion of females to males in the world – 51%.

PP:  How did you learn the process linking the idea, the design, and the construction?

ML: I’m educated in furniture architecture, and in Denmark; the architect needs to be able to make the furniture as well. You design but also spend a lot of time making prototypes and testing. Nearing the end of my training, I knew that I wanted to get into product design. In those days, it was not possible to be heavily involved in product design – you could only become an architect or furniture architect. I got a job at a design studio in Japan, working on things like beacons and golf clubs. This gave me entry into Bang & Olufsen to design hi-fi equipment. I did this for two years before starting my own design office for things like maps, telephones, furniture, watches, sunglasses, and even a loaf of Danish bread.

You can design in two ways.  You can pronounce as a designer, “I want it to look like this…”, and then fight not to change things when the engineers lay out obstacles. That is not the way that I think it should be done.

For example, if I am commissioned to design a portable wireless telephone, I would gather all the information about the people and usage conditions for that product and go away. When it is time to reveal my design, I would not show a drawing but instead, I would tell a story: “You know that the problem with portable telephones is that you can’t find them on your desk with all the usual clutter. So the portable phone has to stand upright to make it easier to find. When the phone rings, there is a vibrator inside that makes it jiggle. These extra cues will ensure that the telephone is easy to find. Then, it should be easy to pick up and pass on, as it is meant to be shared and unlike a personal mobile phone. You need a shape that is easy to hold with a good weight at the bottom for stability.”
When I tell this story, the development team understands it and can tell the same story to the Board for project approval. The same story is told to the marketing department and it gets transmitted to the retailers. Finally, the retailer tells the story to the client buying the product. If the story from the designer is good enough, it can be passed on down the road.  This is what we did with the Linde Werdelin watches and instruments.

PP: Why did you choose watches and instruments as the products for the new Linde Werdelin company?

ML: Jorn and I discussed if we should do a product together; and in the time that we are allocated living in the Universe, what should it be? It should be environmentally correct. It should be something that encourages people to be active, so you keep in shape and be a part of Nature.  We talked about soap and other stuff. You can’t really find a better product than watches. You use the minimum of materials that are durable and if the movement breaks, it can be fixed in generations to come; and it tells you one of the more important things in life – Time – you’re here for a certain period of time. As a designer, I could do all sorts of household goods but for what? Could I go to sleep at night knowing that I did 20 million plastic trays or waste paper baskets and that they would be thrown out within a year? It’s hard to think of a personal product that is more environmentally correct.

PP: What about a park bench? That’s pretty environmentally correct but maybe not so personal.

ML: Indeed, I did a park bench with good friends, Leif Hagerup and Søren Ulrik Petersen. We won a design competition for the new Copenhagen Park Bench. We made a very low park bench because we wanted people to be close to the ground. Normally, when you sit on a park bench you’re perched upright and not integrated in Nature. Danish people like laying on the grass, drinking ‘tea’ or beer. We made our bench low to the ground, stackable and easily moved around to encourage groups of people enjoying Nature. How the bench looked was not that interesting but the story behind it was.  Two years later, we did a picnic set (PicPac) and even our own Danish bread. We noted that the French had the baguette, the Italians have pizza and we wanted to design our own bread based on flour and potato. Yes, we have traditional black bread in Denmark but we wanted a recognised design.

PP: What is the Linde Werdelin design story?

ML: Everybody knows that you don’t use a mechanical watch for diving today. Although there are many mechanical divers’ watches, you can’t really trust your life to them. You did it in the 1930s because that was all you had but today you have a digital instrument – a dive computer that tells you what and when to follow the dive protocols. We asked why we were still telling stories about mechanical dive watches when nobody uses them. It’s a lie. I love watches so it’s a ‘nice’ lie.
When you do serious sports, you need a digital instrument but when you want to tell time quickly, an analogue display is best. We set out to solve this dilemma or build a new story around this. We wanted to build the universe around the product.

PP: How do Linde and Werdelin work to make design decisions?

ML: Here at the Denmark studio, we do product development and design whereas Jorn Werdelin in the UK deals with sales and marketing. Although I am involved with marketing, it is mostly from a creative point of view. Jorn and I have known each other since we were six years old and have been friends ever since. In that sense, you can say that we are like a “Mom and Pop shop”, talking about what we want to do. A lot of this is from interest in the product and then we are very privileged to be working on what we like to do. We also have close dialogue with the people within the company. The organisation is very open and quite flat; we talk a lot to get the best result. We are also fast at making decisions, which is sometimes good, and sometimes it can be a problem. The good thing is that we can turn the small ship around if need be. We’ve listened and taken action on comments that we get. We admit that we have a lot to learn and we are doing complicated things. The Instruments are complicated and doing good watches for a good price is quite difficult as well.

PP: What did you change after PuristS and other client feedback?

ML: For the watches, we decided to improve the craftsmanship, quality and design. We want to find the best people to do the case, supply the dial and make the movements. We get all these from Switzerland and we have to improve the quality and not think that much about the costs. I talk with the suppliers and may have an idea but then this idea becomes terribly expensive. I have to solve this with the engineers doing the construction. Previously, this was a problem when we did not have a close working relationship with the suppliers. The SpidoSpeed is the first watch collaboration when we have been at the Swiss factory working with the technician controlling the CNC machine. We’ve done it before for the Instruments because they are constructed in Denmark and easy to visit.

PP: Is designing the Instruments as challenging as the mechanical watches?

ML: Both the land instrument (“the Rock”) and the sea instrument (“the Reef”) are incredibly complex. They both contain 400,000 lines of program code, roughly the same as a modern smart-phone. The Reef consists of about 300 parts and everything is engineered to 1/10th of a millimetre. We design and create the instruments “in-house”.  It is amazing how complicated they are, especially the design to seamlessly snap onto the face of an analogue watch and have it secure, while making no noise at all.

In part 2,  Morten Linde talks about the SpidoSpeed Chronograph series A and other things………

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