The Red Dot Design Award, perhaps the most important product design recognition in the world, announced its 2018 winners Monday and one of the top awards was given to Tag Heuer for its Connected Modular 45 Luxury Kit.
The modular connected watch is one of 69 products that earned the top award of the competition, the “Red Dot: Best of The Best.” This amounts to 1.1% of the 6,300 products from 59 countries entered in 2018 for judging by the 39-member jury. The Red Dot Design Award, based in Essen, Germany, is established internationally as one of the most sought-after quality marks for good design.
Gisbert Brunner, the watch expert on the jury, emphasized the rise in the quality of the watches entered for 2018.
“This year, the range of watches entered in the competition is miles ahead of previous years,” he said. “As a jury, we had a much larger selection of interesting timepieces and it was a joy to see that these included really good designs in terms not just of their appearance but also of their touch and feel.”
Brunner was especially impressed with the modularity, including its digital to analog capability, of the TAG Heuer Connected Modular 45 Luxury Kit.
“It won over the jury with its modularity in particular: Parts of the watch, such as the case, the lugs, the strap and the clasp, can be interchanged,” he said. “In addition, the smartwatch module can be replaced with an automatic mechanical chronograph module.”
Tag Heuer released the watch in July 2017 after first announcing it at Baselworld, and as mentioned just about every part of the watch is interchangeable, including the digital module, which can be swapped out for a choice of two mechanical watch modules: the Caliber 5 or the premium Heuer 02T Tourbillon. It also is probably the only connected watch to earn the "Swiss Made" label, since, thanks to the analog modules, more than 60% of the manufacturing costs of the watch is incurred in Switzerland.
All of Red Dot: Best of The Best winners will be honored at an awards ceremony at the Aalto-Theater in Essen on July 9 where they will accept their trophies on stage in front of around 1,200 international guests. The award-winning products will be exhibited for four weeks in the Red Dot Design Museum in an exhibition titled, “Design on Stage – Winners Red Dot Award: Product Design 2018.”
