Marc Newson has form when it comes to watches. He helped shape the Apple Watch, the most successful watch of all time, and long before that, he left his mark on mechanical watchmaking with Ikepod in the 1990s. Now, in a move that feels both inevitable and exciting, he’s back. And this time, he’s done it with Ressence.
The result is the Ressence TYPE 3 MN. It’s not just another designer collab. It’s a proper meeting of minds between two people who think deeply about objects, usability and form. Newson brings his unmistakable industrial design language. Ressence founder Benoît Mintiens brings one of the most radical ideas in modern horology: the oil-filled, disc-based time display that erases the space between dial and crystal.
If that sounds cerebral, the watch itself is anything but cold.
At first glance, the TYPE 3 MN looks almost alive. The case has an ergonomic, elliptical silhouette, a shape Newson has refined across decades of work in everything from furniture to aircraft interiors. It sits softly on the wrist, despite its 45mm diameter, helped by Grade 5 titanium and a smooth, pebble-like profile.
There are no traditional hands in sight. Instead, time is shown on rotating discs that appear pressed up against the sapphire crystal.
This trick (and it still feels like a trick, even when you know how it works) comes from Ressence’s patented ROCS system. The upper chamber of the watch is filled with 4.15 ml of silicone oil, which cancels out light refraction. The effect is startling. From almost any angle, the dial looks perfectly flat, magnified, and impossibly close. The information feels projected onto the sapphire rather than planted beneath it. In some ways, just like an Apple Watch or Google Pixel Watch.
Mintiens has always described the TYPE 3 as a “dematerialised” watch. You don’t see the mechanism. You just see the time.
Newson’s influence is immediately obvious. The bold, minimal hands, really graphic markers, nod back to his Ikepod design. The colour palette is confident and calm: celadon green, grey, black, with hits of vibrant yellow. It’s modern, legible and playful.
Look closer, and the detail ramps up. The dial uses Grade 5 titanium discs, including four eccentric biaxial satellites, each inclined at different angles. There’s a runner disc that completes a rotation every 180 seconds, plus displays for day, date and even oil temperature.
Engraved markings are filled with blue and green Grade A Super-LumiNova, so it remains readable in low light.
Underneath all that visual calm is serious engineering. The ROCS 3.6 module is driven by a customised automatic base calibre, with magnetic transmission separating the oil-filled upper chamber from the dry movement below. The watch winds and sets via the caseback, keeping the case sides clean and uninterrupted. Power reserve is 36 hours, ticking along at 28,800 vibrations per hour.
It’s also surprisingly light. Despite its presence, the whole watch weighs just 95g, strap and buckle included. That helps reinforce the sense that this is an object designed to be worn, not just admired through a display case.
What makes this collaboration special isn’t that a famous designer got involved. It’s that both sides genuinely shifted towards each other. Newson has spoken about the satisfaction of seeing his original vision fully realised, while Mintiens describes the project as proof that “one plus one can be more than the sum of its parts”.
There’s also a philosophical alignment. Ressence talks about ‘simplication’, the idea that good design creates clarity without losing soul. That’s been a thread through Newson’s work for decades. “I would like this watch to connect with those for whom purity of form, quality of material and complex engineering is prioritised: those who admire, and find beauty, in a refined aesthetic, and find resonance with an object which looks and feels highly considered, coherent and elegant.”
Limited to just 80 pieces and priced at CHF 46,000 (excluding taxes), the TYPE 3 MN is not trying to be a mass-market hit like the Apple Watch. Instead, this is Marc Newson returning to mechanical watchmaking at the highest level, and I think it’s a big success.
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