Member-only story

FLUENCY IN JEWELRY DESIGN: Gaining A Disciplinary Literacy and Fluency in Design

Warren Feld
8 min readJan 6, 2025

--

Abstract:

Long thought merely a craft, or, sometimes alternatively, a subset of art, painting and sculpture, we have begun to recognize that Jewelry Design is something more. Jewelry making encapsulates the designer’s anticipation, not only of aesthetic requirements, but also those of function and context, as well. Creating jewelry means understanding how to make strategic design choices at the boundary between jewelry and person. Translating inspirations and aspirations into designs and finished products requires an intuitive, integrative sensitivity to shared understandings brought to the design situation by the designer and all the audiences ultimately invested in the product. The better designer is able to bring a high level of coherence and consistency to the process of managing all this — shared understandings, knowledge and skills, evaluative review, and reflection and adjustment. This is called ‘fluency’ in design. For the jewelry designer, there is a defined set of concepts and principles which revolve around this disciplinary literacy — the professional way of thinking through design, production, communication, marketing, selling and critique — and how to be proficient at this. This is what this book is all about.

DISCIPLINARY LITERACY AND FLUENCY IN DESIGN

--

--

Warren Feld
Warren Feld

Written by Warren Feld

Beading and jewelry making have been wonderful adventures, from custom work, production work, and teaching. *Design is about the ability to make smart choices.

No responses yet