Jewellery Design And Human Ingenuity Engineering Essay

What does designing a piece of jewelry (which will take part of a winter collection) have to do with Human ingenuity?

Introduction

Jewelry is sorted in two divisions, the contemporary, meaning modern and fashionable at present time, and then the traditional, which represents something important which occurred in a specific date or time of the year. By traditional can also mean a piece of jewelry symbolizing the country. Each of this characteristics show attractiveness and eye catching designs. Both demonstrate jewelry as a form of precious gem stones, gold, silver, other metals and natural materials.

The primary objective of wearing jewelry as pieces of decoration are to look beautiful and jewelry has been related with women for their personal beautification. The beginning of this tradition started back in ancient times when beads and shells were used as body ornaments, while bones, wood, elephant tusk and decorative stones were carved to produce attractive artifacts.

They had common tradition choices from useful utility like pinning clothes or were symbols and decorated the person from head to toe. However, nowadays the higher claim for jewelry pieces has made craftsmen more creative. Stunning items in gold, silver, platinum and gem stones have inundated the market in variety of styles and designs. The major items include necklaces, amulets, bangles, bracelets, earrings, nose ring, anklets to name a few.

Investigation

How the project relates to the area of interaction

My aim is to design a piece of jewelry for the Gioielli Ltd new ´´Industrial jewelry“ which will take part on their Autumn/Winter collection.

To design a piece of jewelry for the new ´´Industrial Jewelry“ I intend to achieve the following goals:

Attractive

Nice design

Beautiful colors

Good material

Related with the winter season

Comfortable

Cheap

The area of interaction my project on is Human ingenuity.

This project is related with human ingenuity because for executing the project I need first to investigate about how designing jewelry has changed along the time, about what materials, shapes and designs are being used and finally I have to use a lot of my imagination and my own creativity to design my pieces.

Area of interaction

Human ingenuity

Human ingenuity stands for human creativity. This area of interaction has impact on society and the mind of citizens.

The project relates to the area of interaction because industrial jewelry is a type of human creativity and also can result changes in society. Human ingenuity goes beyond the act of creation alone, leading students to study, experience and reflect on the artistic process and on how to create their own way for innovative and attractive new designs.

Description of the problem and its relevance

The problem that I am aiming to solve is whether an industrial piece of industrial jewelry should be accepted as part of human ingenuity or not. In other words I will need to investigate about human ingenuity creativeness and jewelry itself and explain clearly why or why not it should be considered as human ingenuity. So first step investigate and give as much evidences from both aspects (human ingenuity and jewelry). Then due to the information and evidences found during my researches I did my own plan and design specifications which I want to prove by the end of this project.

How to produce jewelry from metal

In order to produce jewelry from metal some different techniques are used such as:

Metal casting

Metal soldering

Metal fabrication

Fabrication and soldering techniques related to jewelry making are related with different type of metals such as copper, brass, sterling silver, fine silver, gold and others.

Instead of doing a metal piece of jewelry directly and risk having a bad piece, first we should try doing a clay structure as the first draft. For instance in our DT class we did a clay model of what type of jewelry we wanted to make. Then we did a metal melting casting by carefully soaking the metal into the clay model without touching it of course.

Other type of metal technique is the fabrication.

“Fabrication” when speaking about metal jewelry making refers to the art of manipulating metal. That means bending, cutting, and shaping it as a way to create jewelry designs. Some techniques require soldering and/or torch work.

In fact when using metal materials such as metal plate and wire for the purposes of jewelry making, very often the jewelry maker is required to shape and form the metal. The techniques used by the artist to do this are considered fabrication techniques because he or she is using methods such as sawing, filing, and hammering to reform the metal piece into a different structure and giving to the material a special shape.

Therefore we can see that fabrication is different than other types of metal techniques. For instance when doing casting we might have some kind of mold for the hot metal to create the structure and shape we want for a jewelry piece. In other hand in fabrication we hand tools and some finesse to achieve the result we want.

We cannot make jewelry without also doing always at least a little fabrication. For example, you may cast a metal charm, but you still need to file off the rough parts and polish the finished piece. You may need to solder two pieces of metal together, but unless the metal has been cut, filed, and cleaned properly, you will never achieve your goals.

As an example when we want to produce jewelry by working the metal we can do it in several ways using sheet metal, wire and other type of goodies. I will make reference to some possibilities:

Stamp on It: We can for instance personalize silver blanks with special words and patterns.

Hammer It: We can create hammered textured strips of different types of metals and designs and then color them with a black permanent marker and rub off the top layer with a polishing cloth so the deep crevasses, nooks, and crannies stay black.

Punch a Hole in It: We can add a textured dangle here, one there, layer with another type of metal and slip all the holes on a decorative jump ring.

Solder It: We can use decorative soldering techniques on the foiled seams, and called it a pendant.

Target market

There is jewelry for both the men and the women, but there are more pieces of jewelry and much more diversity produced for women. The reason why is that women show more interest and passion for jewelry than men do, therefore it is easier to find jewelry for women than for men.

In the end I came to a conclusion that for me making a piece of jewelry for women would be a better choice for the following reasons:

More diversity and more space for creativity

More interest from the customers

More artistic and interesting for me to make it

Easier to achieve my goals

Industrial type

Industrial jewelry is becoming extremely popular. The industrial look is quite popular among city crowds.

As a recent example we can find in the market a lot of specific jewelry that brings together aspects of ancient Celtic design, modern tribal style, and the Goth culture to create a powerful modern industrial statement for the urban warrior or anyone simply impressed with the strength and beauty of modern industrial design.

Industrial jewelry is made by the same materials as mechanism which include plastic and rubber shapes (rings, chains and cords, gears), nuts, electrical signal connectors, heat sinks (spooked-ring radiators for cooling electronics), gears, and brilliantly colored laser filters. Jewelry components can include real pure silver (beads, tubes, and wires) and glass beads (modern-day and traditional).

Example: Industrial piercings consist of two piercings along the outer ear rim linked by one long bar. They can be placed either straight across the ear or at an angle. In different parts of the world the term “industrial piercing” can refer to a vertically placed piercing but many people use the term regardless of the bar’s orientation. It is very important to get a bar with the right length for your industrial piercing.

Existing products on the market

There are many existing products on market for both men and women. There are more products for women than for men have like I mentioned before when I choose explained why I had chosen that target market.

Women have products in markets like:

necklaces,

amulets,

bangles,

bracelets,

earrings,

nose ring.

Men products are less:

necklaces,

amulets,

bracelets,

nose ring.

These are some examples of products that I found interesting as jewelry for both women and men.

For women:

For men:

Conclusions on the impact how my research findings will influence my piece

My research will have a later impact on my designed pieces due to different features and type of designs found on internet. The reasoning is the information and good examples found of other jewelry made by other artists, that is how I will get influenced. The inspiration from other works will somehow influence my own work. Research is very good and important for improving my knowledge and inspires my own imagination when developing my pieces of jewelry.

Design brief

In this project I am going to design and make a type of jewelry which is based in women interest which should be attractive, comfortable and adequate for a winter collection.

There are many types of women jewelry like earrings, rings, necklaces… etc, but the one I am thinking of doing is an earring or a ring. A ring might be the best choice because I do not have the material needed to make more advanced objects such as earrings, bracelets, neck laces… and besides in my opinion by making a ring I think I will have a better chance to achieve my goals.

Plan with what my design must and should have

To go ahead with my plan the design must have the following:

I will have to design tree different drawings of different pieces of jewelry that I am thinking of doing, highlighting the main features of each one.

All the materials and designs need to meet the specifications mentioned to achieve each of my goals.

I have to follow the right steps when doing my project/work.

At the end I have to check the result of my work and justify the chosen design by fully evaluating the product created against the design specification.

Moreover my plan the design should have the following:

The evaluations of each of the designs by telling on a matrix table what could be better; what should I improve and what is good about each of the designs that I have made.

I have to identify why and how my project helped others students to know how to create a piece of jewelry.

Tests to be done to check if my piece meets the design specification

To test if my final piece is done in accordance with my design specification I will use:

A detailed check list to verify if I followed and properly executed all the steps of my plan and design specification. Below there are a few of verifications to be done:

Is my piece appropriate for adults or kids?

Is my piece appropriate for a man or a woman?

Is the piece related to the winter season?

Did I make a design before starting to do my piece of jewelry?

Did I follow the design done before starting to do my piece of jewelry?

May my piece of jewelry help teaching kids artistic ways to make jewelry?

Did I make sure my piece of jewelry was not too big?

A questionnaire to be done to several people in order to survey their opinion and allow me to verify if my goals were achieved. If one or more of my goals were not achieved I should know thanks to this test. Some possible questions to be done are:

Do you like my piece of jewelry?

Is it attractive?

Do you like the colors of the piece?

What do you think about the type of material used in the piece?

Do you feel yourself comfortable with it?

Do you think it is appropriate for the winter collection?

Is my piece more appropriate for a man or for a woman?

Finally, I will compare my piece of jewelry with another existing similar one, that I feel is a good example and meet all the features I was looking for.