How to Design Jewelry: Insider Industry Tips for Success

Whenever someone asks me what I do for a living I say, "I'm a jewelry designer". The response I get is always, "oh, that must be so fun!"-- Yes, it is fun to be able to earn my living using my talents. Its fun to be involved in the ever changing Fashion industry. It is definitely fun to travel to Europe to shop for trends and attend trade shows. However there is a side to being a successful professional designer that is often not considered; the business and the process of jewelry design.

I began my career while in college, The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, as an intern at a fashion jewelry company called Trifari based on 5th Ave in New York City. Over the next 20 years I would design for brands such as Monet, Kenneth Cole, Sigrid Olsen, Ellen Tracey, Avon,and eventually become the Vice President of Design at Liz Claiborne inc.

The business of jewelry design is very important to understand if you are going to be successful. There are so many creative types that don't take the time to listen to the needs of the company they work for, and are thus less successful than others. What do I mean by 'needs' ?

Every company has financial goals. The success of the people managing the brands is based on meeting a dollar goal. When you are aware of which products sell the most units, and bring in the highest dollar profits, you will then be better able to focus your 'creative' efforts on products that "feed the need".

Doing this increases your value as well. Why? Because whenever a product sells with great success they always will ask "who designed this?"--and that is very good. But be aware, when sales are low, they always ask the same question. So its important to be able to understand what else effects the sales of product.

The best way to explain this to creative people has always been through the use of visual proportion. If you have a barrel of apples and you sell the whole barrel, then if you had more apples out there, you potentially could have sold more because the customer really liked them.

If you only sell 1/2 the barrel, then you put too many apples out there and the customer thought they were bad apples. The point is this--WHO- decided how many apples to put in the barrel. Not the designer. Just like the 'who designed this' question , be aware that there is another reason WHY products generate the intended profits and why they do not.

Merchandisers are the people who plan and track the products sold to the stores. When a smart designer is paired with a smart merchandiser, the results are often very good sales.

The process of designing jewelry is also important to understand. This is a part of the business called Product Development. Every design must be made for a particular first cost.

Throughout your career as a jewelry designer its important to pay attention to the manufacturing processes that can help to build your ideas in the most affordable way.

Please don't think that you should know this all at once, it is a skill that comes through experience and exposure to factories. The field of product development is a great career option because there are so few truly knowledgeable individuals out there.

What you should be skilled in is technical drawing, and have a basic understanding of the major manufacturing processes like casting, stamping, plating,mold making,etching,and model making. No matter what kind of jewelry you design, fine or fashion these processes are the same.

One good tip to keep in mind is that the more processes needed, and the more times an individual in a factory has to 'touch' each design along the manufacturing trail, increases the first cost of your design. So a smart designer will begin to intuitively use his/her creative brain to keep costs low through design.

The best advice I can give any new designer in the industry is to seek out the people that have been there before you and learn from them. There are so many wonderful, talented individuals working as merchandisers and product development experts. These people can help you to become successful, sought after,and improve the 'fun' factor in your career as a jewelry designer.