I think that Hermes watch that the article thinks so highly of has an awful typeface. It's cool that they went to the trouble of designing something to work within their design language, but it's totally unreadable. It would have worked better to simply leave the hour marks totally unadorned.
Yeah, I’m not a big fan either. Especially the 6,8 and 9 are super inconsistent with the other numerals.
Instead of relying so heavily on circles, which don’t appear in any of the other numerals, a three quarter circle arc would’ve worked much better. The cut could then sit between the arc and the straight edge. even the eight could have this straight edge between the two arcs, with the ends of the arcs being the respective cut.
Maybe that wasn’t striking enough for the designer, though.
