Expand your design ideas for jewelry; bring your jewelry to three-dimensional lifeBoost-up your design ideas for jewelry with these useful three-dimensional design tips. Your jewelry design will stand out for its originality and sculptural characteristics. Your skill to achieve volume and to experience concavity and convexity will attract all attention. Here are the resources you need to cram your jewelry with spatial energy.
All the elements and principles of design you now master are there to give harmony and unity to the visual impact of your design ideas for jewelry. Now, begin your journey towards the depth of space and form. Three-dimensional design brings forward multiple ways of seeing and comprehending an object. One point of view will never suffice to grasp the infinite range of forms and volumes.
Defining space through formThe most common form of three-dimensional work is an object that can be viewed from every angle, in the full round. For your jewelry to have three-dimensional qualities it must provide different views when turned around in your customer’s hand. Form and figure are terms that usually get mixed up. A three-dimensional form can have multiple two-dimensional figures when seen from different angles. Therefore, figures make up one of the elements of form. Your challenge is to grasp the complex nature of thinking and seeing in a multidimensional fashion. When thinking about your design ideas for jewelry, mentally turn these ideas around, see them from both sides, from the top, from the bottom, from an angle. Go beyond thinking about the mere surface and move the piece in your imagination to start noticing its space and volume. For jewelry makers, it is absolutely a must to mentally watch the flowing change of contours every time they conceive a piece of jewelry. Three-dimensional design also works with the conceptual, the visual and the relational elements we studied before.
The conceptual elements are the defining structure of your design.
When you rotate a form in your hand or in your mind, you see different figures every time you’re moving it. Each new point of view will reveal a new figure. The structure that governs the way a form is built (the conceptual, relational and constructive elements) may or may not become apparent in the overall, color, texture or shape of the form (the visual elements). For example, the external appearance of an object may seem very complex, while its internal structure might be very simple. Sometimes, the internal structure of a form may not be evident. Once the internal structure is understood, a better appreciation of the object is achieved.
The three-dimensional challengeYour challenge as a jewelry maker is to create a piece of jewelry that makes the viewers want to investigate the work, rather than merely glance at it and move on. Take a look at the fantastic sculpture by Henry Moore below, now that is 3D mastery! Your well designed three-dimensional piece will capture viewer’s attention and make them want to discover new things.
However, that is not to say that designs that defy gravity are intriguingly novel. Other approaches used by jewelry makers, exaggerate the downward pull by means of visual tension. For a piece of jewelry to hold a viewer’s attention, it must change continually as it is moved around and at the same time maintain an overall sense of continuity and wholeness. The cohesiveness of the elements of three-dimensional design is the key goal for achieving spatial and volumetric interest.
The basic elements of three-dimensional design for jewelry makers are:
Details within the form help to lead and guide the viewer around or through the work. What viewers see can change dramatically as their perspective changes. The best way to increase the effect of three-dimensional form is to use negative space. Piercing, penetrating and hollowing-out form is an integral part of constituting space.
The effect of light in three-dimensional objects affects the values of light and dark areas in terms of their brightness and darkness. You can easily control these effects by the way you control, in your design ideas for jewelry, the changes in contour and how light strikes the piece. For best results, you may accentuate lower areas to cast greater shadows and increase the bulginess of higher areas to obtain more light. You can also use smooth surfaces to reflect light and use textured surfaces to attenuate reflection. Rounded forms tend to graduate the changes in values while angular shapes cast strong shadows. Space is the distinctive characteristic of three-dimensional design. What builds the sense of space is scale. The relative size of three-dimensional work affects the way we perceive ourselves. When scale is distorted, exceedingly large or painfully small, different emotional reactions are suggested. In your design ideas for jewelry, scale and proportion are very important elements to consider. If jewelry is meant to be worn, then it should be designed and crafted to suit the human body. In three-dimensional objects, because the relationships among the parts and the movement of the viewer are constantly changing, the time factor becomes crucial. A continual interplay of forms and movement helps explain why time becomes an element of three-dimensional design. When applying the time element to your design ideas for jewelry, have in mind that achieving movement is the key factor to experience time. Jewelry makers can blend moving pieces to their jewelry in order to create unpredictable patterns when worn. This kinetic quality will bridge the notion of time. You can handle it as an ephemeral experience; appreciate it only once, or as a recurrent change, differing as the wearer moves. How to apply these three-dimensional design elements in your jewelry? Designing and crafting a three-dimensional wearable object involves the design and organization of contrasting forms. This grouping of forms will reflect the experience of movement, balance, force and tension in space.
You will experiment what negative space is all about. Negative space brings all the form together; it provides its fullness, its proportion and complexity.
References used in this section: Zelanski and Fisher (1996); Dondis (1973); De Sausmarez (1983) |
What you have read until now is the visual language of two-dimensional design. 
