What is Immersive Design?

Draw every day and any way you can. No one ever needs to see what you draw but you.

Art: Your sketchbooks are the place for pure, unadulterated and unbridled expression. Just draw like nobody is watching you!

Originally published 9-15-2016

Lately, I've been bombarded with many questions about Design. You see, next weekend, I hope to embark on a new series of site-specific Immersive Design Workshops I have created to help jewelry makers who may not have had a formal education in Art or Design or Craft to understand what exactly design is.

My hope for this series is to show how to consciously use the Elements and Principals of Design to create new jewelry works. As an artist, I want to introduce you to the new ways you too can see the world around us that will open all new avenues to creating your own jewelry. But first, let's address a scary word to the uninitiated: Design. That’s with a capital D.

Understandably, Design is a hard concept to get across to a group of folks who may have been conditioned to just make jewelry during workshops or classes that spring from project-based ways of working.

We can't help it -- as jewelers, we use materials and techniques to create objects. We make a thing. The only way to learn how to use a specific technique or material is to act it out with something real. So, there has to be some wearable or hold-able result to wrap our hands and minds around, and every teacher must come up with some object to copy that hopefully achieves the results that she hopes to get across during that class. It's no wonder Design often is sidelined in the process. You are there to copy a thing. Sad, but too true. But please consider this: if you intend to go beyond copying works that others have designed to solve a particular set of teaching objectives, Design eventually has to come into your skills arsenal. I hope I can help you.

Design is a hard concept to communicate using words, because much of it comes from intuitive, feeling or purely visual places -- we see or feel or deduce a thing, and then we set about expressing those qualities during the creation of an object. Simply stated, Design is the sum of Form plus Function. As a trained Graphic Designer, I love art and design. I live for design. And, there's a huge world of exciting and beautiful 2D design I won't go into here, because we are talking jewelry, right?

The interesting thing about jewelry design is that it not only encompasses Art, it also involves Craft. For many, Art and Craft are the same thing, but consider this: there are ways to craft an object that is well designed, extremely useful and which also may or may not simultaneously be a beautiful work of art. Art, Craft and Design can all exist together in one object -- or not. So, what the heck?

Let's start at the beginning: Art. Art is a human need to express something in a creative way. It's communication of a feeling, idea, or emotion. It can be beautiful or not. Whether 2D or 3D, Art makes you see or feel something using a creative way.

Art vs. Craft. We need them both to make jewelry, but there are nuances to each.

Craft: Models and technical samples are a way to work out fabrication issues while you develop materials and tool mastery .

Then, there is Craft. As jewelers, Craft is our guiding light. Craftsmanship is probably the most important skill we can master, and it takes practice and expertise with many tools and many materials to become a jeweler who makes objects with fine craftsmanship. You don't need to be an artist to be a fine craftsman, though.
Believe it or not, the mechanical skills required to craft any object can be passed on to other people who can copy or even duplicate the object if they have spent enough time practicing or developing those skills. I am not saying this is easy, because there is tool mastery, and mastery of materials -- but you don't need to be an artist to have them.

So what is Design? Like art, design is a human expression of creativity. But design is a process that solves a problem. A designer is an artist who "solves" things through planning, and organized thought and then follows a process to create an object that serves some purpose or some function. As jewelers, the "solution" is usually some object to be worn on the body. Sure, you can craft an object without designing something new or different -- like a simple metal band ring. But what if you want to make a band ring nobody has ever thought of before? Welcome to the world of Design.

Planning and experimentation, along with documentation are all part of the creative process. You need all of it to make your work - work.

Design: Technical Journals – or workbooks –are imperative for jewelers to keep track of patterns, fabrication steps, layouts and plans.

The language of Design is easily understood. There are Elements and Principles and Disciplines and Categories of Design. My Immersive Design Workshop will help you unlock your potential by mastering the Design Language in a fun and approachable way. For two and a half days, we will work together as a team in a location that allows us to go out, look, see, feel, explore and understand with our senses and our hands and minds. You will walk, draw, learn, investigate new ways of welcoming the muse, master the language of design, and learn dozens of new tricks to get in touch with your very own artistic genius already living inside of you. I will show you how to use what you see, hear and are intrigued by to jump start what's already there. And we will have fun while we do it. There is work too, so don't think this will be a cake walk -- although there will be food, too... It is New York, after all.
Need more info?
Details can be found here: Helen's Immersive Design Workshop, September 23-25, 2016.