What are the Creative Methods

posts techniques of the week. If you take the time to look around the site, you will find many inspirations in people's designs, and in the forum topics. Here is one of MANY...

http://community.create-your-style.com/content/zulu-stitch

Start here for information on various color trends:

http://www.trendstop.com/index.php?SRC=color-trends

http://www.colourlovers.com/

http://www.fashiontrendsetter.com/content/color_trends.html

but basically, googling "color trends" will net you thousands of links!

If you want to follow your own nose for style, though, anything can be a color guide for you.  Try looking at gardening catalogs, paintings, take a walk around with a digital camera and find groups of things with colors that appeal to you...

Good luck!

Zina

...and while I realize that this is a lot late, perhaps it can help someone even if Kenny isn't around...

Basically, I think the "creative" part of designing jewelry is highly individual, and each person will come to their own creative styles the more they work at it.  But I do think it's important to keep the principles of design in mind, because without those things, you're working somewhat blind.  When I was teaching creative design (in any of the fields I've taught it in), I found that this one was the one area that a lot of people just didn't have under their belts -- and it's so important if you want to end up with a good design.

Or, as one of my mentors was wont to say: tough to work outside the box if you don't actually know where the limits of the box are in the first place!  (She was really big on doing everything on purpose, not by accident.  Nothing in a design, she always said, should be left to chance.  I don't know that I always agree with that -- some of my best designs have been happy accidents -- but I understand what she meant.)

There are many, many definitions for the principles and elements of design, but one version of the list might be:

Principles of Design:

• Balance
• Rhythm
• Proportion
• Dominance
• Unity

I like the list and explanations at this article: http://www.digital-web.com/articles/principles_of_design/ -- he's talking about web design at the beginning, but the concepts he explains about 1/3 of the way in are classic principles of design that are easily translated out to designing jewelry -- for instance, as he explains each of the principles, think of how that principle applies to, say, a necklace.

Some of this you'll have almost instinctively -- we're so used to some of these principles that we don't even think about it.  Repeating a pattern in a necklace, or having a main focal point with secondary focus points in your necklace, are two easy examples.

What's really interesting is to think about the principles of design when you're looking at very avant-garde designs, and see how the artist has or hasn't used those basic principles.  It can be very instructive.

If you've ever wondered why a critic or designer looks at a piece of jewelry and dismisses it with "not a technically good design", or if you've ever looked at a piece of your jewelry and thought, "something just doesn't look right about this" or if you've taken a picture and thought, "why doesn't this look as good as I thought it would?", 9 times out of 10, it's usually because what you're looking at isn't following the principles of good design.

I've designed theatrical sets and costumes, wedding gowns, jewelry, embroidery, graphics, web pages, you name it, since I was old enough to put needle to fabric, and I still sometimes miss on some of those principles.  It's a challenge, but I always learn something with every new project.

Hope I haven't gone way over the top, and I hope this might help someone.  :)

Zina

P.S.  And I think that suggestion about learning new techniques is REALLY important.  As you learn new techniques and methods, they will naturally start adding themselves to your "toolbox" of creativity.  As that same mentor mentioned above used to tell us, everything stems from your technical ability...she felt that it was no good to have ideas if you didn't have skills in place to make those ideas come to life.  :)

Hello Zina,

Wow... thanks for your comments.... i'm really impressed...

For sure, i gonna apply your advice to my future thinking process and research...

Great websites too....

Regards,

Kenny

Something else that I think is also important (I know, sorry, I do go on and on) is to consider how your jewelry is going to work with the season's lines.  Yeah, there's no strict rules, but if hemlines for daywear are quite high, for instance, you're probably not going to want to do huge, voluminous designs that are meant to fill in a large open neckline, as since when hemlines are high, usually so are necklines, and when hemlines are low, necklines also (usually) fall.  There's exceptions, of course -- but they come with their own caveats.

Formalwear, for instance, often has low necklines that you can fill, but if the trend is for shiny, glitzy fabrics, you'll want to use more color and texture, and if the trend is for velvet and texture, then you can use more hard glitter and glitz yourself.

I find the fashion forecasts very useful for this.  If you're working on same-timelines instead of a season ahead, though, one of the easiest things to do is to walk into any store that's currently showing their lines for the coming season and look at the mannequins!

Zina

P.S.  With this, I'm assuming we're talking commercial stuff -- jewelry as purely and solely art, of course, has very few boundaries.  :)  With that sort of jewelry, naturally, people tend to find clothing to frame the jewelry.

Thank you so very, very much for sharing your knowledge and expertise with us.....you are exactly what many of us want and need in this group!  DO, please, go on and on....you are fascinating. 

Will check out the web pages you suggested.  I am always looking to learn more about design.  I agree with many of your mentor's opinions...cept that I do love all my "happy accidents" and much of my designing is from trial and error....starting with an idea and working through all the "not quite rights" until I am happy with the result.  I think if I had more formal training I could have fewer "not quite rights" and thus spend less time reworking my designs.

So...please keep contributing...You have at least one (and most likely many, many more) avid students here!

Sparkles and smiles,   Diane

I'm always happy to pass on what was passed on to me by so many generous people -- I often think that it's the least I can do for those who encouraged me and gave me so much that was invaluable to me and my development as an artist.  Like I said, I can go on and on, so if anyone is bored, I hope they'll be understanding enough to just move on. ;)  Also, if anyone else has something to say about what they've learned about the principles of design, that'd be very useful as well, as I have only one perspective on it (mine), and it's always wonderful to have more than one take on just about anything.

I personally always suggest that the first thing design students should start with is the basic principles and explore as many facets of those principles as they can before moving on.  It was always hammered into me that even very experienced artists should review these things periodically as well.

The thing about "rules" of course is that they're extremely malleable -- rules of design can't actually be broken too far, because one of the most time-honored rules of design that there has ever been is to break all the rules!

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't know what the rules are in the first place, though.

For instance, regardless of our fondness for fun, artsy, out-there designs, there will always be a need for that one most popular design ever -- a pendant focal point simply strung onto a chain or wire.  If you're not gold or silversmithing the bail yourself, well, there's not a whole lot that's exciting or innovative about that, though we often try our best to come up with something.  :)  What is paramount there is matching the weight of the chain to the components such as the bail and clasps, and making sure nothing is out of balance in this very simple arrangement.  Thus, even in such a simple, basic design scheme, balance, proportion, unity, and all the rest are actually even more important than they would be in a huge, over-the-top art piece.

Moving on, we start decorating the chain or wire itself.  Proportion and weight and balance and unity become even more necessary -- have we moved too much attention off the focal point?  What are the secondary and maybe even tertiary focal points of the piece?  Is the unity of the piece affected by different color choices?  Have we moved too much weight to one part of the piece than another?

Once you become proficient enough at your techniques, start developing your own design style, and start looking about for something more challenging, then you can start playing with rules, but being able to work within the rules is your first step.  Playing with weight and proportion and balance is great, but in order to step outside "safe", you have to know what "safe" means in the first place.

One of the biggest time savers a designer has is a pencil and piece of paper.  It was the most enormous lesson for me to learn how much time I could save by making a sketch of my design first.  Yes, you can still have design disaster, but you're much more likely to save yourself time, money, and heartache by sitting down with your chosen components and sketching out the design of the piece out, tracing round your elements if necessary to check proportions of components to each other.  You'll also save time and money by being able to figure out an exact shopping list as well.  I also almost always put together several of the components to test the design, sometimes with inexpensive wire or other supplies.

It usually takes me less than 10 minutes to do a rough sketch of the average necklace, earrings, or bracelet.  Definitely time well spent!

Here on the website, I see we have a Design Tool -- I haven't completely figured it out yet (I've yet to discover how to add wire or other clasps or other components), but it looks like it's a great place to start playing.

I do need to write something I want to send someone who has contacted me privately on how to figure out proportion and balance of a piece ahead of time before the heartbreak of making a piece and then discovering it doesn't work well.  I have to get back to London and my computer before being able to make the diagrams I want to send with the mail, though.  If anyone else is interested, I'll post it once I've got the thing ready for her.

Hello Zina,

I'm interested in all stuffs that can help me to developed in this design world..

I would like to thank you for  your sharing of information and expertise in design...

Me 2, i 'm trying the design tool.... its great but i'm getting some problem to reload the files afterwards...

Keep on like this, i am waiting for your future notes as its is really amazing...

Kind Regards,

Kenny

Okay, in the interests of starting at the beginning and working our way out from there, let's discuss those Principles of Design again.  You may recall that they are:

• Balance
• Rhythm
• Proportion
• Dominance
• Unity