Origin of the Rolex Logo

One of the most recognisable and successful brand icons in the world is the Rolex logo — the iconic Rolex coronet. One would venture that the Rolex logo is sometimes the driving reason for people to purchase a watch. The company’s brand strength is bar none in the watch industry, it draws us to spend thousands of dollars just to own a piece and be associated with it. Let’s take a look into the origins of the brand.

How did Rolex get its name?

Rolex was founded by Hans Wilsdorf and Alfred Davis in 1905 . Contrary to popular misconception, it was actually founded in London, England and not Switzerland where it is currently headquartered. When Wilsdorf, an entrepreneurial bavarian, was 24, he founded a company in London specializing in the distribution of timepieces. Together with Davis, the duo imported Hermann Aegler’s Swiss movements to England and placed them in watch cases made by Dennison and other suppliers.

The pair assembled very early wristwatches, and these watches were then sold to jewelers who finally branded their own names on the pieces. On early watches, one would be able to spot “W&D” on the inside of the caseback. Wilsdorf was born in Bavaria but later moved to Switzerland when he was a teenager. He worked at a watch export company in La Chaux-de-Fonds. Later on, he moved to London to start the organisation that would eventually turn into the almighty Rolex. 

The brand was originally registered as Wilsdorf and Davis, and the company only became known as Rolex Watch Co. Ltd. in 1915.  

A Rolex poster circa 1920s, note the narrow and elongated spindles of the coronet

Some speculate that the name Rolex was derived from the French phrase, Horlogerie Exquise, which can be translated to ‘exquisite watchmaking’. Others speculated that the name was selected as it resembles the sound a watch makes when being wound. 

According to Rolex.org, the company’s philanthropic arm, Hans Wilsdorf considered a few choices before coming to his decision that fateful day. During a lecture he gave on 2 July 1958, on the 50th anniversary of the Rolex brand, he declared, “I tried combining the letters of the alphabet in every possible way. This gave me some hundred names, but none of them felt quite right. One morning, while riding on the upper deck of a horse-drawn omnibus along Cheapside in the City of London, a genie whispered ‘Rolex’ in my ear.” If this tale is to be believed, the name Rolex came from a mystical genie.

The origin of the Rolex logo: The Iconic Coronet

Exquisitely proportioned, the sleek Rolex logo with its five-pointed coronet insignia fits right on top of the name “Rolex” like a glove. The Rolex crown ranks among the most iconic logos of all time, along with the logos of Apple, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Mercedes Benz. The Rolex brand is the most valuable watch brand in the world. According to Forbes, it is estimated to be worth $9.5 billion.

The Rolex crown was designed by Hans Wilsdorf and Alfred Davis, and in 1925, the logo was trademarked. In the time after this, the logo has seen little evolution, and still remains very similar to the original logo trademarked in 1925. It has been speculated that the tipped points in the coronet act metaphorically as the fingers on a person’s hand. Another theory believes that they represent the letters in the word Rolex. These days, two colours have been added to the logo, the familiar dark gold and green that we know of Rolex today. The logo is also often coloured in yellow and dark green when displayed on billboards and on external physical media.

 

The Rolex logo today

The logo typeface has been identified as a modified version of the Garamond font. Garamond fonts are a group of many serif typefaces, named for sixteenth-century Parisian engraver Claude Garamond, generally spelled as Garamont in his lifetime. Gramamond types followed the model of an influential typeface cut for Venetian printer Aldus Manutius by his punchcutter Francesco Griffo in 1495. These serif letters have designs that scholars describe as ‘old-style’ with letters with organic structures not unlike quill handwriting, but with a slightly more rigid and upturned design. After a surge in popularity in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, many modern revival faces in the Garamond style have been developed and are still used contemporarily.

A perfectly timed picture of the yellow Rolex logo and F1 driver Lewis Hamilton

 

Besides its official logo on printed and online media, the Rolex logos are obviously found on their dials. While these logos have kept to the same similar form, there have been numerous variations over the years such that listing all these dial variations would require its own article! Generally, the fingers of the Rolex coronet are thinner in older models and slowly they have increased in size to resemble the modern insignia and are pretty much uniform on all of today’s models. Check out some of the variations below.

 

Hope you learned a thing or two about the Rolex brand. Check out the Barkerhill blog for more watch history and content.