Mondaine Brand Guidelines: The Swiss Station Clock on a Wrist Since 1986

A family firm that began in the watch trade.

Mondaine was founded in 1951 by Erwin Bernheim. The company says he started it in Solothurn. English Wikipedia says the business followed the takeover of Neuchatel Watch, an establishment dating from 1928. In 2001 swissinfo marked the firm’s half-century as a Zurich company, and wrote that its founder should have been a tailor before the watch trade changed his career. German Wikipedia describes him as the son of a Zurich tailor who moved from the tailoring workshop into selling watches to friends he had made during the war years.

German Wikipedia says Bernheim wanted a watch for everyone, on the model of the Volkswagen, and began producing inexpensive metal and plastic watches for export. swissinfo reported in 2001 that Mondaine could claim to be an industry pioneer with LED and LCD digital watches in the early 1970s. German Wikipedia describes a digital quartz watch developed in the mid-1970s with Brown, Boveri & Cie, whose rate the wearer could correct by button.

The turning point came in 1983. German Wikipedia says Ronnie Bernheim, the founder’s son, took on a commission that January from Pierre Arnold, president of the Migros Federation, for an inexpensive Swiss watch sold through the retailer, with the first 500 models due within 28 days. The M-Watch was presented on 24 February 1983, the same source says, a week before the Swatch launched in Zurich; the M could stand for Mondaine or for Migros. By 2001 swissinfo reported that Migros had sold more than five million M-Watches. The partnership did not last unbroken: German Wikipedia says Migros ended the contract in 2010 after accusations on both sides, and kept using the name on watches from another source until a court decision in 2013. Mondaine has again supplied the M-Watch to Migros since 2019.

Hans Hilfiker’s clock.

The design Mondaine is known for was not drawn by Mondaine. The Swiss railway clock was designed in 1944 by Hans Hilfiker, an engineer employed by the Swiss Federal Railways, SBB, with the clock maker Moser-Baer, English Wikipedia says. In 1953 Hilfiker added the red second hand, shaped like the baton used by train dispatch staff. That gave the clock its current look. English Wikipedia says it is among the examples of 20th-century design shown by the Design Museum in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The clock’s behaviour is as distinctive as its face. Trains in Switzerland leave on the full minute, so station clocks take an impulse from a master clock each minute. English Wikipedia says the second hand circles the dial in about 58.5 seconds, pauses at the top, and starts again when the next impulse arrives. swissinfo counted more than 3,000 such clocks in Swiss stations in 2001.

In 1986 Mondaine turned the design into a wristwatch, with SBB’s approval. Wikipedia in English and German gives that as the year of the licence, and English Wikipedia calls Mondaine the exclusive licensee of the clock face. Success was slow. Ronnie Bernheim told swissinfo in 2001 that for the first six years not many people wanted it, because it was seen as an advertising watch for the railways.

The company’s timeline then records a run of recognition: a Design Plus award in 1993, a four-metre Mondaine SBB clock over the meeting point in Zurich’s main station in 1994, and a place in a three-volume survey of design classics in 2006. Mondaine dropped the original 58-second motion from its watches around 2001, according to Wikipedia, and returned to it in 2013 with stop2go, whose red hand completes its circuit in 58 seconds and pauses for two at twelve.

The clock also reached far beyond the wrist. Apple’s iOS 6 used a similar face in 2012, and on 12 October that year SBB and Apple announced a licence agreement covering devices such as iPads and iPhones, with its terms kept confidential. English Wikipedia says Apple removed the design with iOS 7.

Design at the scale of a dial.

Watch makers sell objects small enough to hide in a closed hand, so their pictures work at a different scale from the product. The usual image is a macro shot: a dial filling the frame, with the printing, the applied markers and the texture of the surface all larger than life. Brushed and polished steel is lit so that the two finishes separate, and a crystal is angled so that the eye sees through it rather than a reflection on it.

A second set of pictures moves to the bench. A watchmaker’s loupe, a pair of tweezers and an open movement on a work mat are the trade’s shorthand for skill, and they appear in catalogues whether a brand makes many of its own parts or few. Those images show a craft; they do not by themselves show where a particular watch was made, which is why this guide keeps what a company says apart from what independent sources record.

Close-ups do the rest of the work. A chronograph’s pushers suggest timing and motorsport, a screw-down crown suggests water, and enamel and sapphire suggest depth and permanence.

The public stage has long been the fair. Geneva hosts the trade’s big gatherings, where stands are built like small buildings and new models sit behind glass under careful light. Around that stage sit the other habits of the category: archive reissues, anniversary editions, and timekeeping partnerships in sport. Each one gives a brand a story to tell about time, and each one depends on a record that can be checked.

Two peaks in the M.

Mondaine remains a family business. The company says André and Ronnie Bernheim are co-owners and members of its board, and German Wikipedia says the firm belongs to Erwin Bernheim’s two sons. The company’s timeline records a new administrative headquarters in Zurich in 2003; Wikipedia in English and German now places the seat at Pfäffikon in the canton of Schwyz.

Production is centred on Biberist in the canton of Solothurn. Europa Star reported in June 2008 that Mondaine had begun building a factory there, four times the size of its nearby plant, for assembly of Mondaine, Luminox and private-label watches. The company dates the opening to 2009 and says it produces all its watches at Biberist. German Wikipedia adds a distinction: a Hong Kong subsidiary makes low-cost promotional watches that are not Swiss, and the Pierre Cardin fashion watches Mondaine sells are not Swiss made.

The group also grew through Luminox. JCK reported in December 2016 that the Bernheim brothers, who had bought half of the business in 2006, had become sole shareholders by buying the other half from founding partner Barry Cohen. German Wikipedia says Luminox production then moved to Biberist.

The company explains its own mark. It says its logo carries the Swiss flag and that the M is modified to resemble two mountain peaks. Typography has been a product idea too: its Helvetica collection of 2014 took the typeface as inspiration, with the date window moved slightly off the central axis to suit the dial’s lettering, and a smartwatch followed in 2015. The company says its essence line, launched in 2017, uses renewable materials such as castor oil for the case, and that it has been carbon neutral since 2020.

For a design guide, Mondaine shows a brand built on a licensed public design: a station clock face carried into new cases and straps. Compare Swatch, which reached Swiss shoppers a week after the M-Watch, and Oris, another Swiss maker. For this guide we use red, black and white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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