Use design patterns of geometric interactions in your jewelry design

Finally, design patterns applied to your jewelry

Design patterns synthesize the product of harmoniously combining the conceptual, the visual and the relational elements we have seen before.

The design patterns are therefore the outcome of your personal expression in jewelry design ideas. They are not about replicable diagrams, but about abstract arrangements of figures.

Your jewelry design will stand out because you’re using universal and time-less design schemes.

They are not however design patterns to reproduce; they are models or paradigmatic instruments that will aid your designs.

Formal connections between geometric shapes bring about completely new figures and effects. It is precisely when a unifying effect is achieved that design patterns transform into whole new visual configuration.

For best results, hold together the figures you’re manipulating within a design pattern that depicts unity.

To make these design patterns appear harmonious you have several schemes at hand. You can use them to try different arrangements and effects depending on your intent and message.

Your jewelry design ideas will reap consignment deals.

These schemes are:

Overlapping,
Abutting,
Interlocking,
Intersecting,
Subtracting,
Integrating,
Separating.

When shapes are placed beside each other, sufficiently enough for them to be nested one on top of the other, an overlapping scheme is portrayed. Overlapping schemes may have different effects.

jewelry design patterns

The overlapped shapes can acquire mass by light and shadow effects and are able to create a new shape from the overlap.

Overlapping is best used as the bond to stick together various shapes and figures.

Abutting is the relationship between shapes when put side by side. They then share the edge or boundary of their figure and can visually create a whole new outline.

Abutting is best used when a group of similar figures, especially regular figures, are arranged touching each other. This will create a cohesive design pattern that stands by itself as a design entity.

design patterns Crossing shapes with one another is a result of having a portion of one of them being covered by the other. Interlocking is achieved mainly by mixing opposite design elements: concave with convex, horizontal with vertical, acute with obtuse angles.

Interlocking is best used when opposite contours “fit” with one another, in order for the scheme to suggest a unified whole.

Intersecting can be confused with overlapping. The difference resides in that the intersecting scheme has as its main design feature the intersection.

Geometric shapes that intersect create figures in their intersection and this is the visual design pattern that is outstanding.

For the most dramatic results, you can use the intersecting figure prompted as your design pattern leaving the construction of the intersecting unrevealed.

When an invisible shape overlaps a visible shape, the result is a subtraction. The portion of the visible shape that is overlapped by the invisible one becomes in itself invisible.

Jewelry design patterns Subtracting therefore becomes a game between positive and negative shape.

Use subtracting schemes in jewelry design ideas to convey oppositional forces or to create tension and a gravitational pull in your design patterns.

Integrating figures is the merging of one another into a unified and single figure. When two or more shapes blend a new and superior shape is born.

When integrating different figures make sure that the amalgamation or the result suits your design interests.

Integration is best used when it can be formally related to a structure, or else, it may be confused with a figure in its own right, not a geometric integration.

Familiar design patterns are particularly associated to repeating but separate figures.

Separating schemes offer sufficient space to acknowledge irregular figures. In turn, the space that actually separates them becomes important or not depending on the tension between the figures.

This scheme is best used in design patterns that explore visually persuasive characteristics such as color, texture, shine, etc.

Even greater design patterns can be achieved by mixing these schemes.

Take forward your jewelry design ideas by making models of your own design patterns.

You don’t have to use metals for now, start with some cardboard, paper, sticks or cloth; whatever you have at hand.

Now that you’re an expert in two-dimensional design, it’s time to plunge into the world of space and form.

You’ll learn all about the three-dimensional elements that define space and void.

Go from Design Patterns back to Design Basics

References used in this section: Ching (1985); Zelanski and Fisher (1996); Wong (1992)