Ressence wins the Red Dot: Best of the Best for the TYPE 3 Marc Newson

The TYPE 3 Marc Newson has been named a Red Dot: Best of the Best 2026 in the Watches category, the top distinction of the Red Dot Award: Product Design, and the most-referenced design prize in the world. The honour crowns a watch shaped by two design minds: Ressence founder Benoît Mintiens and industrial designer Marc Newson, whose collaboration set a strong design language against a strong technical foundation, resulting in a design object that truly provokes wonder. 

What convinced the jury, I think, is that one plus one made three,” says Benoît Mintiens, founder of Ressence. “A very strong design language met a very unique technical system, and from that meeting came a result neither of us could have reached alone.”

Judged across the full breadth of the Red Dot Award: Product Design, a field that spans cars, furniture, medical devices, and machines, the TYPE 3 MN took the Best of the Best in the Watches category, the mark reserved for the finest design in its class. 

The instrument and the musician

For Mintiens, the collaboration works because each side plays to its strengths. “Ressence is the instrument, and Marc is the musician,” he says. “His genius was to see that an instrument like ours could play a kind of music no one had heard before.” 

The team built the watch around Newson’s vision, giving him the lead on design while the brand supplied the technical backing and Mintiens’ intricate understanding of what truly makes a Ressence. The result carries Newson’s hand and Ressence’s engineering in equal measure, a shared prize and proof of a conviction Mintiens returns to often. 

Alone, Marc would not have arrived here; alone, neither would I,” he says. “Together, it worked, and that is the whole reason we collaborate. We are better with more minds in the room.” 

TYPE 3 Marc Newson

The TYPE 3 MN distils Ressence’s idea of time made almost weightless. Beneath a domed sapphire crystal, an oil-filled chamber lifts the display to the surface, so the hours seem to float on the glass. Driven by the patented Ressence Orbital Convex System (ROCS 3.6), the discs rotate in unison to display hours, minutes, seconds, day, date, and oil temperature, all legible from any angle. An ergonomic elliptical case completes a watch made to be read at a glance and lived with. 

The Oscars of design

Mintiens is clear about what the recognition means. “The Red Dot is the most referenced design prize in the world, the Oscars of design,” he says. “To be the best in your category is a strong signal. And the category is product design, which is exactly who we are. We make products, and the product happens to be watches.” 

That framing matters to him. A watch judged as a designed product, alongside cars, furniture, and machines, speaks to a belief Ressence has held since it launched in 2010: that fine watchmaking belongs to the wider world of design. Founded in 1955, the Red Dot Award enters its Best of the Best winners into the Red Dot Design Yearbook, a record that charts, year after year, where design has been and where it is heading. 

This is the third time Ressence has entered the Red Dot Award and the third time it has won. The brand was previously honoured with the Red Dot: Best of the Best 2024 for the TYPE 3 BB2, and the Red Dot 2023 for the TYPE 8. 

About Ressence

Founded by Benoît Mintiens in 2010, Antwerp-based Ressence is setting a new paradigm for watchmaking, rethinking what a mechanical watch would be if it were a 21st-century invention. 

Known for its patented Ressence Orbital Convex System (ROCS), which replaces hands with rotating discs, Ressence crafts watches that are intuitive, legible, and deeply human. Award-winning innovations like oil-filled dials and the absence of a crown serve a clear purpose: ergonomics, clarity, and experience. 

Ressence applies design thinking to fine watchmaking, providing mechanical watches with functional meaning for those who value clarity without losing soul and functionality without compromising beauty. Ressence calls this Simplication, a dedication to innovation, minimalism, and human connection in watchmaking. 

In an industry dominated by tradition and status, Ressence stands apart as a design-led independent. Its made-in-Switzerland watches are built for modern life, not the museum. Its audience is curious and optimistic, seeking watches that spark conversation without pretension. 

Wearing a Ressence is a statement of optimism. A belief that the future holds more promise than the past. 

For more information, please visit ressencewatches.com