A designer is a lot more than just someone who knows how well to draw. A designer is made from all the below listed qualities and the one who works hard around all the qualities and gives their best in embracing each character in their work is what makes an extremely good jewellery designer.
1. Think out of the box:
What is thinking out of the box? It’s a thought process that involves you to think in creatively out of the ordinary. Thinking out of the box is a capability to think out of one’s comfort zone, to take chances and risks to get inspired from the surrounding and give it a twist to change the entire perception of the viewer. One’s ability to think outside the box gives them more opportunities career wise and keeps the designer constantly on their feet. We have all read about creative design thinking the ability to solve complex problems through creative thinking helps in developing the right designs for the customer.
2. Practical Knowledge:
One can’t be a designer if they don’t have a good control over their hand, a designer must know well how to free hand draw and should always be brainstorming on their design ideas, a design to be finalized goes under a lot of work from rough sketches, understanding what would work and what wouldn’t to creating prototypes and then making some final minute changes. To do able to design a well thought piece one must have practical knowledge of how manufacturing works and what can be feasible.
3. Research, Analysis and Critics:
One must always start from the base, inspiration can come in different forms, it’s important to segregate between primary research and secondary research once clear the process of creating a portfolio for your upcoming collection the designer must always acknowledge the work he has been inspired from. There should be a thorough analysis on not crossing the thin line between getting inspired and copying. As designers one will always have a wide range of critics but at first you must learn to be honest to yourself about your work, must put yourself into customer’s shoes and be your own critic.
4. Communication:
As a designer your work must communicate first before you start explaining. Many times I hear designers say our work is enough to do the talking but it’s not practically always possible. So, good communication skills whether it is face to face, through email, text or video call one must learn to be polite, accept the feedback with grace and use what can really help you be a good designer. Communication not only means how you talk to people about daily work but also how your represent yourself and how you talk about your projects and your collections.
5. Never Stop studying:
The learning and the changing trends and styles and people’s needs never really stop and same with knowledge. You can never say that I know everything because jewellery or any design field all of them have one thing in common the change of likes of customers, trends and forecast. Because it’s an ongoing process one must stay open to learning new things and updating themselves with the needs of the industry.
6. Ability to take criticism:
The toughest thing for any designer is to deal with criticism. Designing is a people pleasing field, our customers are what makes the brand. If the customer is not happy with the work there comes criticism but many times customers are very happy with the product that comes out of all the brainstorming and hard work but 10 out of 15 customers will be satisfied the other five will give you the time of your life they will make you give your 200% and brainstorm like never before but in the end it will result in a happy customer. But the initial part of criticism and accepting your customers review even if it’s not positive is very very important. You have to be good at taking direction to improve your work and build on communication.