Antwerp-based Ressence has picked up another trophy for the shelf. The TYPE 3 Marc Newson has been named Red Dot: Best of the Best 2026 in the Watches category, which is the top prize the Red Dot Award: Product Design hands out. If you’re not familiar with Red Dot, think of it as the Oscars of design, except instead of judging actors, they judge everything from cars to furniture to medical devices. Watches have to compete in that same pool, which makes winning a bit more impressive than picking up “best watch” among only watches.
This is actually Ressence’s third trip to the Red Dot party, and its third win. The brand took Best of the Best in 2024 for the TYPE 3 BB2, and a regular Red Dot in 2023 for the TYPE 8. At this point they should probably just reserve a parking spot for the trophy.
What makes the TYPE 3 MN interesting is the story behind it. Ressence founder Benoit Mintiens teamed up with industrial designer Marc Newson, and by his own account, the partnership added up to more than the sum of its parts. “One plus one made three,” Mintiens says, which sounds like bad math until you see the watch.
Mintiens likes to describe Ressence as the instrument and Newson as the musician. Ressence brought the engineering, the patented ROCS system (that’s Ressence Orbital Convex System, version 3.6 if you’re keeping score), and years of knowing exactly what makes a Ressence a Ressence. Newson brought the design vision and, apparently, the ability to make an instrument play music nobody had heard before. Mintiens is refreshingly honest that neither of them could have pulled this off solo.
As for the watch itself, it does what Ressence watches do best: make time look like it’s floating. Under a domed sapphire crystal sits an oil-filled chamber that lifts the display right up to the surface, so the hours seem to hover just under the glass rather than sitting flat on a dial. The ROCS 3.6 system spins a set of discs in perfect coordination to show hours, minutes, seconds, day, date, and even oil temperature (yes, that’s a thing you can check now), and all of it stays readable no matter what angle you’re looking from. The elliptical case is shaped for the wrist rather than for tradition, which fits Ressence’s whole philosophy.
That philosophy, by the way, is the real headline here. Since launching in 2010, Ressence has argued that watchmaking belongs in the world of design, not in a glass case at a museum. Winning Best of the Best against cars and furniture, rather than just other watches, is proof they’re not just saying that to sound clever. It’s also a nice reminder that sometimes the best ideas come from two very different experts refusing to stay in their own lane.
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