Career Profile: Jewelry Designer

Is Diamond the woman’s best friend? This article talks about the career profile of the Jewelry Designer. Jewelry Designer can also be spelled as Jewellery Designer. A Jewelry Designer, as the title implies, designs jewelry.

Jewelry designers should ideally be familiar with the manufacturing process. He or she is required to understand the jewelry design process. The process may include any of the following stages:

1. Conceptual design
2. mounting
3. stone-setting
4. polishing
5. electroplasting
6. metal casting

To be a Jewelry Designer, one must be artistically talented. One must have a good sense for aesthetics and design. Jewelry design is often part of many art and design courses. It is often considered a subset of the Industrial and Product Design family. Apart from that, it is also considered a branch within Gemology which is the study of Gem stones.

Increasingly, computer software are being used in the design process. As such, a modern jewelry designer may also need to be familiar with Computer Aided Design(CAD) softwares. A popular jewelry design program is JewelCAD. Increasingly, Rhino3D is being used for it too. Below show Rhino and Grasshopper used for design a ring.

Places that offer Jewelry Design courses include:

1. School of Silversmithing and Jewellery, University of Central England (UK)

2. School of Art & Design, Buckingham College of Higher Education (UK)

3. School of Jewellery Design, Central St Martin’s College of Art & Design (UK)

4. School for Art and Technical Education in Jewellery, in Pune, Maharashtra (India)

5. Le Arti Orafez, Jewellery School and Academy, Florence and Lucca (Italy)