The Alterum story starts with a lesson in simplicity — designing less, cutting away the chaos. Simplicity is brutal and harsh, but when nothing else can be added or removed, it becomes truth. With this premise of simplicity and reduction, designer Justin Walters set out to create a hybrid American-Swiss watch brand to precisely express this beautiful, brutal simplicity.

Walters' first venture with this new brand starts with the Alterum Worldtimer, a Swiss-manufactured integrated bracelet piece that embodies this minimalist point of view. On the wrist, the time-telling experience is distinct from other world time watches. The dial consists of four concentric circles: the innermost dial tracks minutes; the next tracks hours and the following displays the 24-hour time with a day/night indicator. The outermost disk features 24 cities that allow wearers to easily track each timezone. Instead of traditional hands that mark the passing of time, printed graphic elements are instead employed to maintain visual cleanliness. The resulting abundance of negative space wonderfully showcases the textured dial, which dances between an understated grain in the shadow and exuberant speckles under direct light. 

Keep going past the dial, and you'll notice a stepped bezel that completes the circular motif that runs throughout the Worldtimer. The architecturally-minded will draw a line from this to the tiered structure of New York's Guggenheim Museum, the sculptural masterpiece by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright from which the Worldtimer draws inspiration from. This theme flows through to the vapor-blasted 316L stainless steel case, which measures 38.5mm x 10.5mm, and integrated bracelet which utilises a 'lugless' design to create a sense of architecture on the wrist. At two and four o’ clock, there are two crowns that seem to almost flow into the case, yet are easy to access due to hidden recesses at the base of the watch. The top crown serves to operate the bidirectional city disk and the bottom one is for setting the time and winding the watch.

The Alterum Worldtimer is a tribute to all things design, architecture and simplicity. It's a bold debut, but one that wholly embodies American minimalism in a radical and refreshing manner rarely seen in the watch industry.