Discipline and using method in designing jewelry

Jewelry Discussion
81 
I just make pretty stuff that I like and that I know is well
crafted, and engineered to last. The last three words distinguish
the "just pretty" design from one that will look great but turn out
to be top-heavy, or lopsided when worn...or too fragile at a point
of wear..etc.,etc. Yes, there is a considerable amount of
engineering that goes from translating a design into a wearable and
durable ornament.

Question: What do you do when a customer presents you with a
self-made design for a custom piece for a very special and/or
sentimental occasion, and you take one look at it and know it won’t
fly?

Dee

82

Had an in depth chat with a jewellery design teacher (she’s also a
paid designer) yesterday.

And expressed the concern that I had about coming from a sculpture
background, required inspiration, and that if I have a problem I
jump in the tub to sort it out.

Her view on this was that my solution “was” part of what she
considered to be the design process, for me.

Her main concern was some jewellery designers, cannot fathom how to
build things, and end up creating designs that cannot be made.

So what I’m doing is part of the design process for me. Apparently
I’m thinking and worrying too much about it.

This sounds like another fly in the ointment, it helps me, but
muddies the discussion… sorry.

Regards Charles A.

83

The Original Post refers to ‘discipline and method’ but I refrain
from limiting the words to the design of jewelery alone.

Designing a marketing plan can be more productive than designing a
piece of metal. I see all kinds of designs right here in Orchid and
they are diverse indeed!

Discipline and method are essential in all things, maybe this is a
universal formula. The word, “Design” is as slippery as, “Art”.

Alastair

84 
i realized how lucky i have been with my work when i read this : 

I don't necessarily make what I like, I make what the customer
wants.

Please don’t feel bad for me ive. I love what I do, I’m not shackled
in any way. It’s an incredibly challenging profession, it’s different
every day. Quite often it pushes my skills beyond where I’ve been
before (even after thirty years), and it pays really well too, mainly
because there’s not many people that can do it well (contrary to the
indirect messages of some of the comments on this thread). After all,
it’s much harder to create something we don’t like to a high degree
of craftsmanship than it is to stay within limits that we are
comfortable with all the time.

ah, but would it not be more self-satisfactory to have a customer
say "i love your designs. could you make something for me in
amethyst (whatever) like one of these (whatever) pieces?"

I get to do this and more every day, you pretty much summed up the
whole custom jewelry thing. I get to meld my customer’s aspirations
and ideas with my own creativity to make things that touch their
lives for many years in a way that picking out one of many different
pieces I created beforehand can’t do. I get involved in a very
personal way with peoples’ happiest times, their most cherished
memories and I’m trusted to work with their most treasured
possessions. I can think of nothing more personally satisfying for me
than to make a young bride, her mother and her grandmother cry for
joy at achieving that “something old, something new, something
borrowed, something blue” all in one very special piece of jewelry,
or whatever it is that makes that particular group of people joyful.
Happens all the time and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Like so many others, I too do this for the love of it, but mostly I
do it to keep tires on my car and food in the fridge. So I guess I
tend to look at all of this discussion from a more pragmatic than
academic perspective. We can get all wrapped around the axle trying
to define what’s design and what’s art, how long it takes and if it
doesn’t take long enough, it’s not real design (or art) and all of
that. In my opinion, whatever we want to use for terminology to
describe the motive, means and end, if we don’t touch the lives of
others in a positive, meaningful and lasting way, we are wasting our
talents and very likely our lives. And if one of my customers sends
me a Thank You note saying what a great artist I am, I’m not going
to argue, what do I know about such things? I’m going to put it in
the book, smile and send a card back saying “Thank You for trusting
me! Oh and please tell your friends!” ('cause Baby needs a new set of
sneakers)

Dave Phelps

85 
One other aspect of this is whether a good design process can be
taught or whether one has to be born knowing how to do it.

Very nice little book David wrote there. I would caution people not
to take his analogy of wedding rings too far - that’s the specific,
it’s the general that counts, here. Principles…

but would it not be more self-satisfactory to have a customer say
"i love your designs.

I’ll point Ive to their favorite cliche’ - think outside the box.
That’s not pointed, it’s just expanding on something that this thread
has touched on here and there. I’ll back up a bit and talk about
myself…

I’ve made many thousands of pieces of everything, but mostly
jewelry. I’m into my fortieth year as a jeweler - that’s almost all
40 hour weeks, if not 50. Sitting at the bench. And yes, my designs
are very good to great - that’s what the marketplace tells me. What
that means is that I’m an old-timer. I’m not a starry-eyed kid
looking at all the wonderful things to be discovered in jewelry
making. I’m been there, done that. I say this as a point of view
because it’s important to understand when I say that I’m bored with
myself. I’ve already done all of that stuff, and yes, I could make
up more stuff but there’s another, better alternative.

There is no black and white in anything, but this subject almost
does have that: there are people who make their own stuff, and then
there are people who make work to order or even other people’s
designs. There’s no right or wrong about it. I do both, for
instance. I will say, as a matter of discussion, that those who say,
“I only make my own stuff” are actually missing out. The worst case
I know is a lady who only makes one thing, for years now. She has
this metal-mosaic thing she does, and she styles her rings, pendants
or what-have-you, but they are all her metal-mosaic thing. Over and
over and over and over again.

To me, the better alternative is to open yourself up to the world.
People bring me designs, stones, and work to be designed that I
would never think up by myself. They bring me stones that nobody
here on Orchid would ever set on spec. And the most satisfying part
of it all is that I make jewelry FOR people. That’s much of David’s
little book quoted above. Who are you? What can I do to make you the
perfect bridal set? Or whatever it is… For me, all of that is way
more satisfying, and light-years more challenging, than me just
sitting there examining my own navel.

It’s like I said on an entirely different topic - there are many
values gained in getting a job in jewelry - honing your skills,
being exposed to other people and ideas. The biggest thing, to me,
is when the foreman/boss says, “Do this. I didn’t ask you if you
like it or not, just do it”. Sink or swim. So – I said it before,
but after reading this people likely forgot. I’m not saying it’s
~better~. For me it’s better, plus my work is sold before I make it.
Just don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. I can make my own stuff
all day long, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

86

Academics use lists of principles as mnemonics to aid the student in
being aware of the factors that underline any system of thought or
belief. The lists are an attempt to develop from the subjective views
and philosophies of the teacher an objective check list that the
student might use in performing to the academic standard.
Line–check. Point–check. Volume–check. Movement–check. While
excellent for demonstrating the factors that are important in a
system such as jewelry design, I find these lists of little use to me
when I am in the process. I don’t think of these factors, five
principles and seven elements, twelve no-no’s, when I make something.
When I pilot an airplane I definitely use a check list before
takeoff. For me, the evolution of a design for a jewelry piece is
thoroughly subjective and intuitive. Ex post facto, the list can be
useful for criticism, for describing why a piece does not work well.
Perhaps, since I never learned those principles and elements as a
list when I was a tyro, I have a problem seeing how they might direct
me except as I stated above. I also consider it possible that I am an
uneducated Philistine with a short world view (I thought I would
obviate that criticism by being the first to bring it to the fore).

Gerald Vaughan

87

It’s an important question if you (like me) aren’t one of the
people who can’t come up with new designs very quickly.

believe in yourself and practice ! when i design maybe one out of
every 500 are really good and one out of 5000 are great this does
not stop me from producing ideas it makes me produce more. maybe we
should get a workshop going on how to design

Thanks for the encouragement!

I’ve been working very hard at learning to design art objects for
the last several years. I’ve had a good working knowledge of
historical artistic motifs for decades, but not with an artist’s eye.
It’s been a real challenge to teach myself to see the individual
components of the design instead of just the overall result. My
visualization skills have been weak for most of my life, but the last
few years they’ve really improved with all that practice. It’s had
the side effect of giving me a large data bank of idea bits to draw
from. (Idea bits are just what they sound like, bits of an idea, not
a fully formed idea.)

I’ve gone from a design idea every 5 years (earlier in my life) to
every year to every 3 months to every month. I’m starting to see a
further significant decrease in my “mean time to design” timeframe,
to bastardize an industrial term. I went thru the same thing when I
retrained myself in the IT field to automate my own software design,
construction, testing and documentation work. At first, I could only
think of an occasional simple task to automate, but after a few years
of plugging at it, my colleagues referred to me as “an idea faucet”
on that topic. I’m starting to see the same kind of improvement, so
I’m pretty excited over it. What’s more, because I am approaching it
as a design process instead of just an inspiration, I’m getting
multiple designs out of each design idea.

Once I sketch out the idea (and my sketching skills are horrible -
yet another thing to learn L), I alter it in patterned ways. I play
with the proportions and texture. I think of alternate ways to
construct the item and consider how that might affect what decoration
options that would make easier or harder. I play with the design
motifs, making straight-line hard-edged motifs more curvy and
vice-versa. I think about different coloring schemes - which
sometimes gives me a totally different visual interpretation of what
the piece is about and leads me down a totally different design path.

That doesn’t mean that all my final design ideas are workable or
great art. But more and more of them are workable and I know how to
evaluate whether they are right after I build them. With more
experience, I’ll more often know whether the idea is right before I
build it. J

I just need to squeeze in more bench and design time between my day
job, family, friends and civic responsibilities.

88

I tell them the truth.

Architects and engineers are the worst for this. They give us pages
and pages of specs and drawings to the millimeter for crazy stuff
that won’t work or is over designed.

Sorry but you're gonna have to put this design in a time warp
continuum to make it fly.

We work within the customer’s needs, but when folks come to us they
expect OUR work.

Remember we are the experts. Not the customer. If this was easy,
every body would do it.

Play up the mystery and your expertise without sounding too pompous.
Charge accordingly.

When we design we only offer one or two, at the most, sketches to
the customer. Too many choices and the customer will get confused.
“Here, let me design something just for YOU.” Tim draws on the spot
counter drawings in black and white. For important commissions I’ll
color it in and make a fancy little velum sheet that is tacked at the
top of the rendering so that the customer has to lift it to reveal
the sketch underneath. As my late father used to say, “Presentation
is nine tenths of the battle.”

I can’t express hard enough just how important it is to be able to
accurately draw what you are going to make if you want to make it in
the custom jewelry biz. It brings a sense of confidence to the
customer on your abilities to translate and idea into a piece of
jewelry.

Have fun and make lots of jewelry.
Jo Haemer
timothywgreen.com

89 
When i design jewelry for a client i need to have instructions,
and parameters these instructions are the translation of the
clients personal tastes likes and dislikes. And design is problem
solving

This thread has been a few places. I enjoy posting and writing on
Orchid - I enjoy reading Orchid just as much. Hearing what other
people think, for better or worse. Personally, I think that some
people are making decisions while knowing how and why, and other
people are making the same decisions thinking it comes from some
mysterious place, because they just don’t know different. IT DOESN’T
MATTER if that’s true or not.

For the benefit of Charles and people like Charles who are a bit
adrift about this, I’ll go through something simple, just as an
example. This is intentionally student stuff, not some wondrous art
piece. Goo talks about instructions and parameters. Think about that
in either of two ways: either you are a customer in front of me, the
jeweler, or you are the jeweler alone, trying to figure out what to
do. Remember, this is student stuff, I’m not pretending it’s deep.

You have the proverbial blank canvas in front of you - a piece of
sheet metal of a certain size. Whatever to do? First are the
questions: symmetry, assymetry or complete free form. If it’s
symmetry, then you go down a certain path - circle, square, octagon
or any of various other things, like crosses. If it’s assymetry, then
it’s something INSIDE of a symmetrical shape, or nearly so. This is
where our learning begins to help.

Such things are more pleasing in rounded shapes than in rectilinear
shapes, unless it’s a rectilinear design. Trying to keep this short,
of course everything can be expanded.

I’ll go on, but ~at the same time~ you need to think about what you
want to do, and what you CAN do. Are you going to solder wire, use a
stone, rep= ousse, engrave? These things work hand-in-hand with the
design.

When I took college jewelry, the instructor said, “One thing I like
to do is scribble on a piece of paper, and then pick out some
portion of the scribble that I like.” Well, that’s just not design
at all, not in any real sense. You could say it’s art, but it’s
kindergarten art. Feel free to do it, if that’s all you got.

Otherwise, there is truly freeform. That’s more difficult to
describe here, though it’s not especially more difficult to do. You
either make your shape and work within it’s parameters, or you work
on the center elements and put the shape around it. In any case, you
pretty much say, “This goes there, and that goes there” until you
like it. And there’s WHAT the this is, and what the that is - stone,
bead, enamel, whatnot.

That’s probably enough, as this could just go on and on. It’s the
process and it’s the knowlege of why that helps. You have a circle
and you want to put a stone on it, where do you put it? In the
center is centered. Otherwise there is a 90% chance you’ll want to
but it near the center of a radius line. Why? Because nearer to
center just looks off center, and nearer to the edge crowds the
edge. 1/3 of the way is what people find most pleasing. People who
don’t know this will STILL put it there, almost always, they just
won’t know why. And yes, there are times you’ll put it any other
place you want, it’s just that you’ll have a reason. It’s not a
“design rule” it’s a way of understanding why.

That’s how just about everybody is going to do it, this is just
ridiculously simple, to show the thought processes. I start with 3
dimensions and I just don’t consider the cliches to begin with.
Instead of starting in the foothills, I’m starting from Camp 3. How
about if I do something like this? Sounds good, but what if I went
like that instead? The main thing is to sit down and make it. If
it’s not soo good, then learn from that and do it again. It will
come…

90 
You have the proverbial blank canvas in front of you - a piece of
sheet metal of a certain size. Whatever to do? First are the
questions: symmetry, assymetry or complete free form. If it's
symmetry, then you go down a certain path - circle, square,
octagon or any of various other things, like crosses. If it's
assymetry, then it's something INSIDE of a symmetrical shape, or
nearly so.

This is addressed to all the students of Design. If you are
attending any educational venue, where such approach is taught, ask
for you money back immediately and run, run, run and do not look
back.

Design is a methodology of adapting an idea to the real world, where
the designed object will exist. But idea itself must exist prior to
the beginning of the process. Proverbial blank canvas does not exist
in the world of the design.

Leonid Surpin

91

jeweller vs. artist

How does a jewellery designer get his idea from ‘prototype’ stage to
selling through a major retailer. A graphic artist can employ an art
licensing agent to find and manage contracts. Internet searches have
found only one promising site. To quote:…".if you have your own
jewellery design but lack the means to turn the concept into reality
we can offer you our custom manufacturing service…we also offer a
professional product licensing service dealing with everyone from
lawyers to artist." Unfortunately this firm dealt with a very limited
product range. In a nutshell- I’m looking for someone to get my
design manufactured and marketed, handle the legalities and pay me a
royalty on each piece sold.

92 
Design is a methodology of adapting an idea to the real world,
where the designed object will exist. But idea itself must exist
prior to the beginning of the process. Proverbial blank canvas does
not exist in the world of the design.

A rare time I agree with you (see I’m not all bad). I tend to design
backwards. I know what the finished piece must look like. The
details I add in as I go back to the starting point.

jeffD

93 
I'm looking for someone to get my design manufactured and marketed,
handle the legalities and pay me a royalty on each piece sold.

Claire- That would be you. Do your home work. Find a shop that you can
work with. Develop a relationship with them.

Do your own marketing research. “Who do I want to buy my stuff? Where
are they? How can I reach them? How can I sell them what they desire
in such a way that they keep coming back to me? Which magazines do I
want my work in? What format do they need the photos in? What is the
best way to present my jewelry?” As for copy writing your work and
getting royalties, good luck. If you have a design that is wonderful
and people love, a large foreign manufacturer will copy it in a heart
beat and only change one millimeter of it to make it legal. You can’t
just sit there at a drawing table and hand your work off to someone
to manufacture, market, protect your designs and pay you so that you
become rich and famous. If that were true a whole bunch of us here on
Ganoksin would have done that by now.

You’ll have to do it yourself.
Have fun and make lots of jewelry.
-Jo Haemer
www.timothywgreen.com

94 
In a nutshell- I'm looking for someone to get my design
manufactured and marketed, handle the legalities and pay me a
royalty on each piece sold.

I don’t know Claire, and I don’t know ~exactly~ what she’s looking
for, so this isn’t directed at her - I just think she’s raised a
question with general interest. I was in the elevator with a couple
of young people, years ago now, and one said to the other, “Well,
you get them to make your line for you, and then produce it, and you
can pay them off of the sales you get from the production.” I said,
“Well, you can try…” Another lady called me, even more years
before that, and wanted the very same thing done. When I told her I
wasn’t interested in donating $5K worth of model and mold making on
her unproven product, she said, “I guess I’ll need to get
funding…” It’s your design/concept/dream, and it’s your
risk.

Almost all of everything fails - it’s part of the 80/20 rule. It
COULD be that you can pitch an idea to a manufacturer and they’ll
buy into it, but it’s most unlikely. I’m in that position, to a
degree, and I’ll guess that around 250 people have been on the
doorstep with, “This is the next big thing…” Why? Not because
there’s proof, most of the time, They just want it so much…

All of which probably sounds harsh, because it probably IS harsh.
Why on Earth would I take an unproven design, invest ~everything~
into producing it, set up a whole marketing campaign, do ALL of the
selling, and then just cut someone checks because it was their idea
way, way back in the begining? Does that really sound like something
from this planet?

There are a few ways that it does work. First is to get work in a
manufacturer and sell them on using your designs for themselves.
Second is to sell them your designs outright. There are designers
who do just that - design jewelry and make the rounds through the
trade selling them. You need a reputation, because you can’t show
the designs. I can snapshot any rendering in my mind and just take
it, and I’m not unusual that way.

The other two ways are the ways that it usually happens in the real
world.

First is to make it yourself. I know people right now who are tooled
up for a long run for a major department store, making a certain
product.

They are at least reasonably experienced, plus they have deep
pockets behind them. People do it all the time - form a shop for
some certain purpose and then disband it when the purpose is
finished. The other is to take your designs to a manufacturer (Race
Car Jewelry has a good reputation, I have no experience), or perhaps
a model maker or even CAD. Have your models made, which you will pay
for, and then have production made, which you will pay for, and then
hire a rep or even an agency to sell it. Then, and only then, if
your product moves, do you reap the benefits. Ain’t no free lunches.

95 
Why on Earth would I take an unproven design, invest ~everything~
into producing it, set up a whole marketing campaign, do ALL of
the selling, and then just cut someone checks because it was their
idea way, way back in the begining?

Nobody who understands the risk/reward equation of capitalism would
invest in this proposition. However, there are many naive people out
there, and many of them are wanna-be’s.

Jamie

96 
I'm looking for someone to get my design manufactured and marketed,
handle the legalities and pay me a royalty on each piece sold.

Well, good luck with that. Actually, that is not the way the jewelry
industry works. You will have to produce it yourself, risking your
own money in the process.

M’lou

97

You might find this a useful guide to manufacturing jewellery :

The Jewellers Toolkit a guide to manufacturing
http://www.ganoksin.com/gnkurl/1d1 [PDF File]

Best wishes
Anna M Williams

98

Hi All;

I’m looking for someone to get my design manufactured and
marketed, handle the legalities and pay me a royalty on each piece
sold.

Well, good luck with that. Actually, that is not the way the
jewelry industry works. You will have to produce it yourself,
risking your own money in the process.

I’d suggest that’s not entirely true. There are companies (I used to
be one of them) that will take your designs all the way to finished
and ready to sell, but I haven’t known one that will take it from
there to copyright, distribution, marketing, etc. There are agencies
that will do that for you too, but they probably aren’t in the
jewelry industry, per se. There are some manufacturers that may be
able to advise you on it, or they may know who to put you in contact
with. As for the money invested, if you don’t have the money, there
are investors, but be aware that a large percentage of them now
expect huge returns on their investment and they expect it pretty
quickly.

All in all, financing, marketing and distribution are the most
difficult part of the project, and in that respect, I’d agree, you’re
probably on your own. The idea that you can whip up a few pretty
pictures and parlay that into big bucks is just another bourgeois
fantasy. The world doesn’t work that way except in the movies. This
isn’t just my opinion, it’s been my experience. Back in the early
80’s I worked with a couple jewelers to produce price point lines for
a couple major chains, May-Straus and Dayton-Hudson. It was brutal.

All that said, there is always the option to “shoe-string” it. Start
with a small run using your own money (perhaps using a loan), market
it yourself directly to retailers, keep rolling the proceeds over
into more production. Eventually you’ll have equity to collateralize
larger loans, and by that time you’ll be more savvy about the
business and will see options to expand.

David L. Huffman