Rafael Simões Miranda: from watch design to the IPR workbench
He has designed hundreds of watches for more than 15 brands and in 2011 founded DWISS, the Swiss brand with more than 30 international design awards. Now Rafael Simões Miranda sits at the workbench as a student on the IPR watchmaking course, to learn how to lubricate and regulate movements and, one day, to create the complications of his watches on his own.
DWISS (Design Watch Independent Switzerland) was born in Lugano, Switzerland, with a motto its founder often repeats: telling the time in a different way. From the first watch case in niobium to the wandering hours S1, which in 2026 received the Australian Good Design Award and was selected for the ADI Design Index, the brand has been built on limited series that are never reissued.
Born in Brazil, a naturalised Italian and living in Portugal, Rafael found out about IPR through its newsletter. We spoke to him about what he is learning at the workbench, the brand's journey and what comes next.
From the drawing board to the workbench
After 20 years designing watches and more than 30 international design awards, what led you to sit at the workbench as a watchmaking student?
I've spent many years designing watches, but I was never able to regulate or lubricate a movement. I joined the institute to learn how to do a lubrication and a regulation, and to understand better how movements work: which ones exist and how one wheel meshes with another.
I want to reach the point of making my own modifications to movements and creating complications for DWISS watches. Today I do it with the help of engineers.
After moving to Portugal, you came to visit the IPR workshop. What impression did that visit leave on you, and how did you go from visitor to student?
I found out about IPR through the newsletter, although I no longer remember exactly where I saw it. I wrote to Nuno Margalha, a very friendly and very helpful person, and went to visit the institute. I realised straight away that there was a course there for exactly what I wanted, and I enrolled as soon as I learned about it.
What have you learned on the course that surprised you most, even after so many years involved with watches?
What surprised me most was the patience you need to be a watchmaker. I already knew movements and knew how to take them apart and put them back together, but I had never lubricated one and had never seen up close all the patience this craft demands. That made a big impression on me.
With tweezers in hand, is there a design decision from the past that you would make differently today?
Yes, I would change some things from the past, but the truth is I would always change something. I believe the next watch will always be better than the previous one.
Is taking movements apart and putting them together changing the way you design? Will there be an idea born at the workbench in the next DWISS?
More than taking them apart and putting them together, what I'm learning is to regulate and lubricate movements. That will change my next designs, because ideas will emerge that go from the movement to the watch.
The course has helped me a great deal to get a better sense of how to make modifications to the movement to tell the time in a different way, which is the DWISS motto.
What would you say to a designer or a brand founder who has never opened a watch?
I would say they need to take a specialised course. You don't have to be a master watchmaker, but having a basic understanding of watchmaking helps a lot to improve the design and the product, and even your own presentation to a client.
“You don't have to be a master watchmaker, but having a basic understanding of watchmaking helps a lot to improve the design and the product.”
The journey
You were born in Brazil and became a naturalised Italian, your brand is Swiss and today you live in Portugal. What have you brought from each of these countries to the way you design?
From Brazil came the jeitinho brasileiro, that urge to try to find a way to sort everything out.
I moved to Italy precisely to study product design. I discovered that passion early and went to live there back in the last millennium, in 2000. That completely changed my view of design. I still think Italy is the champion country of design. It's where I learned everything, it's where I also taught, and even today it's where I look for inspiration for most of my projects.
From Switzerland came Swiss quality, Swiss made.
I moved to Portugal after the pandemic. It's a calmer country, and here I learned to have more patience for designing, for studying and for working on movements, for doing watchmaking.
Since 2006 you have designed hundreds of watches for more than 15 brands and taught watch design in Milan. At what point did you realise you needed your own brand?
I realised I needed my own brand after working for other companies. When a product was successful, it was always the marketing people who got the credit. When it wasn't, it was the designer who took the blame.
I thought I could do everything on my own, to take the credit or the blame. To be the one to blame for everything that comes out of my hands.
Once I had gained enough experience with suppliers, I decided it was time to start my own brand.
DWISS
DWISS was born to show the time in a different way. Where does this search for new ways of reading time come from?
I like doing different things as a designer, and I think there are a lot of products that are the same as the others. For example, every brand has a Submariner, right? That's something I don't want to do. Lots of people are already doing it. We don't need one more person, one more brand, one more watch the same as all the others.
I prefer to do something different. I understand it won't be a watch for everyone: many people like purism in watchmaking. DWISS makes something for those who appreciate design and exclusivity.
“We don't need one more person, one more brand, one more watch the same as all the others.”
DWISS presented the first watch case in niobium. How did you come to this material, and what challenges did it bring to manufacturing?
When I launched DWISS, I held an event in Brazil and there I met some partners who introduced me to CBMM, the niobium mining company of the Moreira Salles Group, which is the largest in the world. They wanted to make a niobium watch and had already asked some famous companies in Switzerland, for whom it was a small project. For me it was something big: making something with a Brazilian metal, from the country where I was born, and with Swiss quality.
It was very difficult to work the metal, because it's very soft, and polishing it is very difficult. But after many attempts we managed to make a product of the very highest quality, and I'm proud to have made the world's first niobium watch.
On Kickstarter, the M2 was funded in less than an hour and the R1, with a Swiss tourbillon, in four minutes. What did you learn from these campaigns, and why did you decide to close that chapter in 2021?
The crowdfunding campaigns were very important, because they made me discover markets I didn't know. I went to Asia because of Kickstarter and today I sell very well there. DWISS has many Asian customers, and it was on Kickstarter that I discovered them. While I was more focused on the United States and Europe, crowdfunding opened up an interesting market for me.
I left Kickstarter because today I see lots of brands there, lots of watches, lots of quality people, but also a lot of very low-quality things, as well as fraud. Ten years ago it was different: it was something more exclusive and more focused, and that has been somewhat lost.
The M3 was created with the 100 members of the DWISS Watch Design Club. How do you design a watch with so many hands without losing the brand's identity?
Creating the Watch Design Club was very interesting. I started before the pandemic and carried on during the pandemic, and it was a very stimulating experience for all of us who took part.
The designs were made by me, so it didn't stray far from the brand's identity. I would present, for example, four case proposals and people would vote for one. Members could choose, describe and give opinions, and I would take those opinions and modify the case, but it was always me doing the modifying.
At the time there was no AI. Today, with AI, everyone would have made a watch, and I think it would be impossible to do this with 100 people. But since I was the one who held the basis for making the models, I think the brand didn't lose its identity.
DWISS was an early explorer of NFTs, the metaverse and cryptocurrency payments. What remains of that experience?
I like technology and I'm always following what's happening in the world. As soon as it was possible, I accepted cryptocurrency. When NFTs appeared, I saw that I could make an interesting connection with watchmaking, because an NFT collector could also be a watch collector.
Those who held the DWISS NFT got cashback on the purchase of the NFT and, in 2023, 10% of the brand's revenue that year was distributed among the NFT holders. They also had a discount at DWISS and could vote on and choose new products.
Today we use NFTs only as a warranty, in a digital passport for DWISS customers. Each watch comes with a card and a blockchain record that provide warranty, support and authenticity for each piece.
The brand produces in limited series and never reissues a model. Has it ever been hard for you to retire a watch for good?
I always get requests for old watches, but it has never been hard for me to take a model out of the line, because I know I'll always make another, and what I like doing most is creating. By retiring a model, I'm forced to do what I love, which is creating new models.
People often tell me it's a shame to drop this one or that one, but I ask them to wait, because something better will come out in the future. I always try to improve with every year that goes by.
The S1 and design
The S1 starts from the path of the Moon across the sky. How did that observation turn into a wandering hours watch?
The S1 is the rising and setting of the Moon, that arc we see in the sky. I liked bringing that to a watch, without much detail on the dial. I wanted something really simple, but that showed the passage of that arc the Moon makes across the sky, just as we see it from Earth, from one side to the other.
And so a moon is born every time the hour changes.
“And so a moon is born every time the hour changes.”
The S1 uses a La Joux-Perret G100 Soigné modified for the wandering hours. What was the biggest technical challenge in achieving such a clean dial?
The technical challenge was making it work without the know-how I have now acquired from modifying movements. I worked with people who helped me design the movement, and I hope to be able to do it on my own in the near future.
The biggest technical challenge was making the movement and assembling the watch so that it would be perfect. You need a lot of patience, because the seconds hand has to be positioned right in the centre for the result to be perfect.
The Australian Good Design Award jury had the S1 in their hands for three months, and the watch was selected for the ADI Design Index 2026. What does a design jury see that a collector might not see at first?
A design jury has other qualities, different from those of a collector. A watch collector understands watches, but a design person may understand watches, chairs, buildings, computers, a pen, a glass, everything that is industrially produced. That's why they analyse not only the aesthetics and the function, but also the commercialisation of the products.
The ADI Design Index is very important to me, because it's Italian and it was in Italy that I learned everything. It brings together products from various companies and producers, and it is assessed by people who understand production, product design, and the commercialisation and sale of the things we design.
The A1 Al Ain, made for the Emirates, has a dial with real desert sand. How far can a DWISS special order go?
A DWISS special order can be a single unique piece, as I made for a client in Kazakhstan, or 10, 100 or a thousand, whatever is requested. I'll be there to do whatever is needed, as I did with CBMM, as I did for that client in Kazakhstan and as I did with the Al Ain, the watch with desert sand.
That sand was sent to me from the Al Ain desert, in the Emirates, near Abu Dhabi. I treated it so I could make a dial that also has classic Arabic numerals. A DWISS special order can go as far as the limits of watchmaking technology allow.
The future
In 2019 you described yourself as 70% inventor and creator and 30% entrepreneur, and said there were already too many microbrands. After joining the SIWP and arriving on Chrono24, how would you do those sums today, and what do you think of microbrands now?
I'm still very much an inventor and partly an entrepreneur, but now also a bit of a watchmaker. I'm not a master watchmaker: what I did before joining the institute was very self-taught. I no longer think it's 70 and 30. I've shifted a little from inventor to builder, let's say, perhaps to watchmaker. I don't know the percentage and I'd rather not give one, but I'm no longer just an inventor and entrepreneur. Let's say I'm a designer, an entrepreneur and a bit of a watchmaker.
After joining the SIWP (Swiss Independent Watchmakers Pavilion), the Associazione Ticinese dell'Industria Orologiera and Chrono24, as one of the five microbrands chosen to open a new chapter of Chrono24, the chapter of the independents, I think DWISS has gone from microbrand to independent brand. And that's what I'm aiming for in the future, with our own movements and our own cases. It's a progression: you start as a microbrand and you can become an independent.
When you finish the course, will we see a DWISS assembled with your own hands?
All DWISS watch prototypes are assembled by me, and they already were before I took the course, because, for someone self-taught, if the watch worked in my hands, I was sure it would also work in the hands of a professional.
I have a video on YouTube, recorded live, almost an hour long, in which I assemble a tourbillon movement in the DWISS RC1, which must have been made about ten years ago. Today all the prototypes are assembled by me, but those stay with me. The production watches are assembled by watchmakers in Switzerland.
The ones I assemble aren't sold; they're for personal use. But after the course, who knows, maybe I'll start selling watches assembled entirely by me.
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