Marc Newson

Newson was born in Sydney, Australia, on 20 October 1963 to Carol and Paul Newson, an electrician. Carol was 19 years old when she was pregnant with Marc, and married Paul during the pregnancy. However, Paul left the family soon after Marc was born, and Carol moved back into her parents’ house to raise Marc.

He is of Greek origin on his mother's side.

Newson studied jewelry design and sculpture the Sydney College of the Arts, and graduated in 1984.

In 1986 Newson was awarded a grant from the Australian Crafts Council and staged his first exhibition at Roslyn Oxley9 gallery, which featured the LC1, the first iteration of an idea that was later developed by Newson into the Lockheed Lounge in 1988. The following year he moved to Tokyo, where he mostly worked with the design company Idée, and where he created works such as the Super Guppy lamp (1987) and the Embryo Chair (1988). He describes his 1988 Embryo Chair as "one of the first pieces where I hit upon a discernible style".

He moved to Paris in 1991, where he set up a studio. He co-founded the Ikepod watch company in 1994, leaving the company in 2012. In 1997 he moved to London, where he and business partner Benjamin de Haan set up Marc Newson Ltd. He has served as an adjunct professor of design at Sydney College of the Arts (where he first studied sculpture and jewellery) and as creative director for Qantas.

He was hired by Jony Ive and joined Apple as a senior vice president of design in September 2014. In June 2019, Newson joined LoveFrom, a design consultancy founded by Ive upon his departure from Apple.

Marc Newson has been represented by Galerie kreo since the year 2000. He is also the only industrial designer represented by the Larry Gagosian gallery.

Speaking about his work and methodology in Domus magazine, Newson claims that “you can draw a curve on the paper and know immediately that it is the right one, but you can not do the same to the computer; the curve is not realized with a function or using a digital guide, it is a form that is drawn freehand.”

Newson designed Cosmos, a 114 meter fuel-cell powered superyacht, built by Lürssen for Yusaku Maezawa, and launched in August 2025.

Newson married Charlotte Stockdale, a fashion stylist, in 2008. They have two children and live in Bibury Court, a mansion in the Cotswolds that was converted from its previous use as a hotel. They also have homes in London, Paris, and Greece.

Every year he races one of his four vintage sports cars – an Aston Martin, a Lamborghini, a Ferrari and a Cisitalia – in the Italian Mille Miglia, while wearing bespoke tweed driving suits by H. Huntsman & Sons, and was quoted as saying: "I'm not a motor head, I don't like the new versions of any of those cars."

One of Newson's best friends is Sir Jonathan Ive of Apple Inc., whom he met in Japan. In a 2012 article in The New York Times, Ive described Newson's work:

I think Marc is fairly peerless now. Marc's forms are often imitated, but what other designers seldom imitate is his preoccupation with materials and processes. You have to start with an understanding of the material. Often your innovation is just coming up with a new way to use material.

In 2013, Ive and Newson collaborated on an auction at Sotheby's for Bono's Product Red charity. Over forty objects – "each of which we both like... functional and capable of being made in volume", per Ive; "deeply personal" per Newson – were curated, modified or designed over a two-year period for the auction and show to benefit The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The auction raised $13 million which was subsequently matched by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, bringing the total raised to approximately $26 million.