The history of pop art and its influence today

If you’ve walked past a poster, seen a colourful website or even picked up a birthday card, it's more than likely that pop art influenced the design… 

Pop art stands for “popular art” that’s viewed by mass audiences. It’s been around for over six decades and has shaped many parts of our culture such as advertising campaigns and brand identities. 

First bursting onto the scene in post-war Britain in the 1950s, it had fully flourished by the 1960s with many different cultures and countries contributing to the movement. 

Finding no inspiration from art that was being displayed in museums or taught in schools, rebellious young artists started the pop art movement by questioning what art could be. They started to take inspiration from their everyday lives instead, which included Hollywood films, comic books and even soup cans! 

One of our own designs that has been inspired by pop art is Whoomm. This watch was an extremely limited edition when we first released it back in 2016 as only a handful were ever made. 

This watch can be linked to Roy Lichtenstein’s two-canvas war painting, “Whaam!”. We can see the similarities due to the bold font that’s used and the link between the eye-catching centrepiece of the fire in Lichtenstein’s work and the smoke in our watch.

In today's society, pop art still lives on in the form of Marvel movies, cartoons, and tattoo styles - including some of our watches! Pop art looked at art differently, and we like to think that this also resembles us as a brand and how we look at time in a different way…