Picto

PICTO® watches

PICTO® was created by the two young hippies Steen and Erling in the 80s. In a time when everyone was busy talking about 'time is money', and 'every minute counts', the two creators went in the diametrically opposite direction. With PICTO® you are not a slave of time. Here, the day is not divided into minutes and seconds. It is rather an indication of time. Once you’ve tried it, you become addicted.


WHEN TIME IS NOT AN OBJECT

Ever since the first mechanical clocks were made in the 1200s, they have consisted of a face and two hands. Until Steen Georg Christensen and Erling Andersen set out to challenge the traditional understanding of a mechanical watch.
The year is 1984. Steen Georg Christensen has just acquired his father’s watch factory busy producing watches for great Danish designers such as Arne Jacobsen, Henning Koppel and Erik Magnussen. Despite the bustle, Steen and his partner Erling had a mission: to design a watch that challenged traditional thinking. The watch should be as minimalistic as possible and only consist of a dial and one hand.
The result is PICTO®. PICTO® means picture, and the name is extremely well chosen for the watch. With its minimalist, clean graphics PICTO® manages to provide a picture of time like no other watch. Actually PICTO® is the world’s first wristwatch that displays the time as a pictogram – or an icon of the time in perpetual motion.
The PICTO® watches are up until this day a permanent part of the modern design exhibitions. When PICTO® was launched in 1984, it quickly became a sensation on the international design scene.
1986 Haus Industriform, Essen Design Gallery, Germany
1987 Statens Kunstfond, Denmark
1987 Sonderschau FORM International Frankfurt Messe, Germany
1989 Neue Sammlung München, Germany
2004 Designmuseum Danmark’s permanent exhibition