jewelry design because designs are expected to anticipate and complement rather than clash
with fashion trends across the age range. Kate introduced Shona to the idea of
‘moodboards’ based on themes such as ‘monotone’ and ‘Victorian’ that reflect emerging
fashion trends. Shona collated the sources of inspiration gleaned from shop displays, films
and magazines during the research process on moodboards, and used them as a backdrop
for the formulation of her initial designs for the wedding rings’ designs, colours and shapes.
Once Shona had produced a sufficient range of moodboards to stimulate a discussion,
Matthew was invited to look at them and to select the themes and images that would like to
see developed further. At this stage, feedback was still fairly provisional. Matthew
identified promising ideas worthy of further development.
The transition from the formulation to the instantiation phase took an iterative path.
Following the discussion with Matthew, Shona produced the initial rough hand-sketching of
between thirty and forty rings to allow Matthew to exercise his judgement as regards which
sketches were realistic in terms of their design (e.g. shape, size, complexity),
appropriate as a commercial product, and most importantly, deemed to be ‘new’ in
the market. Having received Matthew’s subsequent feedback on the commercial
potential and practical feasibility and of the themes and ideas for designs, Shona
then made detailed sketches of the designs, including their measurement and scale.
This proved to be very demanding because whereas at college Shona had six months to
come up with one design, at M&M she had to produce a total of forty-two designs within
the same period. As Shona remarked:
the learning curve is to design at a much quicker pace.... I didn’t feel pressure but felt it was a different way
of working (Interview, 5-4-06).
In the past, Shona pondered over ideas for hours, however, given her new production
schedule this was totally un-realistic way of proceeding. The key challenge that she now
faced was to produce a far greater quantity of designs in a very short timeframe. At college,
whereas Kate introduced Shona to a new approach to design based on the principle of
‘pinning ideas down’ quickly, in other words, drafting them from different angles and
perspectives and producing slightly different versions of each design. This process allowed
her to not only clearly explain the idea behind a design to Matthew so that she and
Mathew could consider their aesthetic originality, but also to explain the design’s
idea to Tuwet Baht, the model-maker, to enable him to swiftly consider the
technical implications of each design and offer Matthew and Shona immediate feedback
on their practicality and cost implications (Shona Marsh, interview, 5-4-06). Once all three
parties had agreed which designs would be instantiated, Shona produced very detailed final
drawings for each design so that Tuwet and his team could easily fabricate them.
The fabrication process also proved to be another particularly demanding challenge. Shona