To those not in the watch world, it is a source of mild amusement that watchmakers speak with such pride of their “complications”. To a doctor, an engineer or, let’s face it, pretty much anyone involved in organising anything or holding down a relationship, complications are bad. One seeks to get through life without too much complication – aren’t things complicated enough already?

Not for a watchmaker. Anything that takes a mechanical watch beyond the business of pure timekeeping – displaying the hours, minutes and seconds – is classed as a “complication”. Add a date function? That’s a complication. So is a split-seconds flyback chronograph or perpetual calendar with moonphase. To successfully incorporate these extra functions to a watch is a mark of technical prowess; to do it in a manner that dovetails neatly with existing models or meets that most nebulous of targets, “brand identity”, is a sign of accomplished product design.

And that’s what we find so fascinating about NOMOS Glashütte. The German watch brand is known the world over for its distinctive 20th-century aesthetic: it’s rooted in the best traditions of the Bauhaus school and Deutsche Werkbund (check out our first video here for more of a deep dive into NOMOS’ style and identity). At the heart of such a look is a pretty keen adherence to minimalism. You won’t find busy, cluttered dials at NOMOS. It uses thin, discreet hands, stencilled sans serif typography and clean, harmonious geometry (from the cases through to the dials). It isn’t known for massively complicated watches, either. You won’t see chronographs or minute repeaters at NOMOS. But, equally, there isn’t much mileage in making watches that only tell the time.

The challenge faced by the brand’s Berlin design studio is how to add, without really adding. To explain how cleverly it’s done, we took two models – the Tangente Neomatik Update and Tangomat GMT – and explored the technical and aesthetic steps that give each watch a functional upgrade without compromising the winning simplicity that they depend on. Watch the video above, or head to our YouTube channel to see the rest of our About Time series, profiling watches from IWC SCHAFFHAUSEN, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Vacheron Constantin, Panerai and Cartier.