Suit yourself to the elements and principles of designThe elements and principles of design helps your designs skills to produce beautiful, functional, wearable and practical jewelry. Here are all the resources of visual communication at your fingertips.
Your designs will synthesize the best visual expression of that “special something” you wish to assert through your jewelry. Your jewelry creations will reflect not only your aesthetic but also your own style. Visual language is the basis of design. Design is above all a practical project and a personal experience. There are some elements and principles of design that you will learn here which are significant to foster the beauty of any design. Successful design uses the basic elements and principles of design to deliver a visual message that is able to communicate to the viewer the meaning or purpose of your jewelry. What visual language is all about.
They are merged within your design producing a coherent whole, a “visual impact”. The coherence between your message and the elements of design makes up your style.
Sometimes, when jewelry has not been thought out with these elements and principles of design, the result is a conventional, normal design. It doesn’t have that aesthetic quality that well designed jewelry has. Let your jewelry stand out and hit the sale. There are three basic design elements and we’ll deal with each of them giving a brief explanation of its constituent units, their effect and how to apply them in jewelry design. All three elements will be fully illustrated for best comprehension. Conceptual elements – the structure of designThe conceptual elements are the invisible building blocks of all your design efforts. They are invisible in the sense that they indicate a notion, an impression, not the actual element itself. These conceptual elements are like the bricks and mortar of a building, you don’t see them, but they give the building its structure. When they become obvious, when you are able to see them, they are no longer “conceptual”. These are:
When a point is prolonged, a line is produced; when the line is extended, a plane is formed; and when a plane repeats itself a volume is created. How to use these conceptual elements?
These invisible elements are the ones carrying out your message. To fully illustrate your message use the visual elements. Because the conceptual elements are the invisible building blocks of your design, you visually and objectively express what you want using the visual elements. Visual elements – the skin of design
When conceptual elements are noticed, they become visual elements. When you actually depict them, these elements acquire a shape, a size, a color and a surface. Visual elements are like the words we express while the conceptual elements are the thoughts that we conceive before expressing them verbally. The visual elements in your designs are the prominent features that are evident to the viewer. They are the elements that viewers ultimately see, like the façade of a building. They are the materialization of the conceptual elements. Use them to define the message and intent of your jewelry design.
For example, shape intuitively represents the figure of something, it can span from a figurative to an abstract representation. Variations in size or dimension are useful to describe hierarchy and distance. Colors illustrate perceptions of distance, light and boundaries. Texture represents different approaches to surface and links sight with touch. How to apply conceptual and visual elements in design? Think of the visual elements as bits and pieces that you can play around with. Mixing and matching these bits and pieces will bring about a composition.
This Lego playing yields better design doing it with relational elements.
Relational elements – the life blood of designYou can combine the visual elements in any composition you fancy. The relationships between the visual elements, your composition, should be in tune with the conceptual elements you’ve decided to use. By having this coherence, your message will be understood. In other words, the composition of the visual elements created in your jewelry design will naturally illustrate the message you want to put forward. The visual message is clear thanks to a structure (the conceptual elements). They are:
Mixing and matching the visual elements, having in mind the structure; can be done in an orderly or spontaneous manner. You can work with any of these approaches using the relational elements to steer your composition. Each of them may contain different meanings to diverse people.
The direction of a figure will depend on the position the observer has, the path taken by nearby shapes and the relationship with the outline. The position of a figure will be perceived with respect to its overall composition.
These elements and principles of design are here for you to express a creative intent that responds to a functional purpose with an esthetic nature. Jewelry design may be an artistic venture but should always work for the wearer and bear a message. All this is very good but not enough. Your jewelry design needs a sense of harmony from the elements and principles of design explained here in order to produce exceptional compositions. The streets are full of customary and conventional jewelry. To achieve excellent design, it’s necessary to fuse these elements into a harmonious wholeness.
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You can move them around; you can change their size, color and texture. You can also arrange some of the elements together, side by side, one on top of another. You could merge one inside the other, byte a piece off; connect two different elements with a third, etc. It’s just like playing around with Lego. 
For example, for some people a diagonal line heading to the north-east can mean positive advancement or the notion of future.
