At last! How to design jewelry…

… to reap sales!

Jewelry with great design is the differentiating factor for your jewelry amidst the mass of conventional jewelry found in the market.

Your jewelry will stand out and become recognized with your distinctive style.

How to design jewelry that takes the trade that stretch further?

Master the structure and relationships between design elements and forms. Develop your ability to explore abstract visual relationships and spatial analysis.

This will surely part you away from the crowd and put you in a better position to expand the realms of jewelry design.

This section is dedicated to the study of planar structures.

As seen in the section on elements and principles of design, a plane is made up of surfaces, vertices and edges.

When you start experimenting with planar compositions, your best bet is to start organizing your planar elements by axes. These axes will be expressed by the edges of the planes that in turn structure the surface of the plane.

Experiment with horizontal, vertical or diagonal axis as your first organizational element for the planar structure.

The visual relationships in your planar construction should be governed by the surface of the plane, because the surface is the most powerful feature of the planes. Visual continuity across space is achieved by means of the movement of the surfaces. This movement is structured by the axis you define in your design.

To create more than an assemblage of planes, you can create different volumetric perceptions in the viewer using curved, broken, twisted or grouped planes.

Look at this wonderful sculpture by Clement Meadmore. Simple tiwsted planes... it looks like a square metal wire coming out of the rolling mill!

Check the negative space created around your design and see it in relation to the planar construction you’re devising.

Think of your design in terms of wearability too.

Planar constructions may become sculpturally beautiful but not comfortable to wear.

IMPORTANT FACTS Are the edges of your design consistent with the axes? Do the surfaces of the planes move in a harmonious and balanced way? Is the overall construction structurally connected? Does it look good from every angle?

You can also start combining planes and lines.

To learn how to design jewelry using these two design resources, think of lines as the axis of solid forms, as the constituent element of planes and volumes and as the best element to delineate.

Lines can be curved or straight. Take your time to design your curve not just bend it.

Practice using copper wire with lots of curves, starting from the top, working your way towards the bottom, using one long segment of wire shaping it with pliers.

Make your curves dramatic and dynamic.

Have in mind that each curve you make will express a direction. Make sure to see your composition from every angle and from the top. All the curves have to be complementary to each other and achieve a balanced and exciting three-dimensional design.

Within the linear structure you may start to add planes. These planes can be attached to the edges of lines or between lines. Use paper to ease construction of your model.

Kick-start your conception of space.

Practice how to design jewelry with lines and planes. In your jewelry, lines can become the metal wire and planes can become gemstones or metal sheet. Just depart a bit from the conventional way of setting gems and wrapping wire.

Start thinking like a sculptor, even look for their work to get new ideas.

Mentally think of lines and planes as abstractions and take them to jewelry design. Use them as design elements to build and structure your jewelry.

You can transform lines and planes into organic gestures.

Structures of lines and planes can blow-up and become volumetric solids. Like sculptures, the planes are expanded to form surfaces and the lines are embedded within the structural configuration of the solid.

Master positive volume and negative space to inspire your jewelry designs.

Take a look at the art of concavity and convexity.

Go from How to Design Jewelry back to Design Basics Plus.

References used in this section: Greet (2002)