"If somebody asked me about my inspiration I would say that it's not the peopleand it's not the things, it's travel and experiencing different environments"
About this Quote
Design inspiration, Marc Newson suggests, isn’t a mood board crowded with “cool people” or a fetish for objects. It’s a change in air pressure. By rejecting the usual culprits - trendsetters, products, even the romance of “things” - he’s positioning creativity as a physiological response to movement: the mind becoming porous when the body is displaced.
The line works because it’s both modest and quietly territorial. Modest, because it frames inspiration as something you receive from the world rather than extract from others. Territorial, because “travel and experiencing different environments” is also a form of privilege and access: the ability to collect contexts. In design, context is content. Newson isn’t saying the chair or the plane cabin is influenced by a person; he’s saying it’s influenced by the systems that person lives inside - climate, infrastructure, rituals, constraints.
There’s also a strategic distancing from celebrity culture, which is always eager to turn designers into tastemakers with famous friends. Newson’s emphasis on environments reads like a defense of authorship: his work isn’t a social mirror, it’s an atmospheric one. It makes sense coming from a designer associated with sleek mobility and globalized luxury - products that live in airports, hotels, and transitional spaces. Travel becomes both method and metaphor: a way to keep perception elastic, and a reminder that “newness” is often just the shock of seeing familiar problems under unfamiliar rules.
The line works because it’s both modest and quietly territorial. Modest, because it frames inspiration as something you receive from the world rather than extract from others. Territorial, because “travel and experiencing different environments” is also a form of privilege and access: the ability to collect contexts. In design, context is content. Newson isn’t saying the chair or the plane cabin is influenced by a person; he’s saying it’s influenced by the systems that person lives inside - climate, infrastructure, rituals, constraints.
There’s also a strategic distancing from celebrity culture, which is always eager to turn designers into tastemakers with famous friends. Newson’s emphasis on environments reads like a defense of authorship: his work isn’t a social mirror, it’s an atmospheric one. It makes sense coming from a designer associated with sleek mobility and globalized luxury - products that live in airports, hotels, and transitional spaces. Travel becomes both method and metaphor: a way to keep perception elastic, and a reminder that “newness” is often just the shock of seeing familiar problems under unfamiliar rules.
Quote Details
| Topic | Travel |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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