Some thoughts about design

I can’t tell anybody how to design stuff – not really.  That involves amassing all the design tools and concepts you can get your hands on, assimilating them, and letting them steep in your brain until they gel into something useful.  This is only about what might be a useful tool to know about.  I’ll start way back, at the beginning………..

Fractals are computer generated images, derived from a simple calculation.  Fractals themselves are rather uninteresting, or rather I might say endlessly repetitive.  It is fractal theory that gives us something useful, which is a representation of infinity.  Many fractal images look like some blot of oil on water, with swirling patterns.  Focus in close on one of the parts and you’ll see that the part also has the same pattern.  Focus in again and again and again and every time you will find the same pattern, on into infinity.  From this comes the rather profound thought that the perimeter of England (the theorist was British) is infinite.  That is the Koch snowflake, by the way, in fractal theory.

How could that be, when we all know that England is a finite area?  Well, it’s a matter of resolution.  Typically, countries are measured in miles/kilometers.  Let us say that England is 2,000 km around, just for discussion.  If you measure England in centimeters, around each and every rock and outcropping, it will measure 100,000 km around.  In millimeters 2,000,000, in angstroms 1,000,000,000,000,000, in quark theory 1 x 10/500,000th power, and so on.  All very interesting, in a “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” sort of way.

It’s a blog – I’m supposed to write something ;<}

So, what does this have to do with anything, you ask?  First off, that the actual beginning of fractal theory is pretty new, and required the computer to calculate and display, but there has been a human representation of the concept for centuries.  That representation is the Mandala.  You’ll find many definitions of the mandala.  Jung called it the unconscious self, some call it a picture to meditate with.  I call it a image of God, as do some others.  “God” in this case meaning “all things”.  Everybody, no doubt has seen a mandala somewhere – typical Persian rug patterns have the gist of it, often.  Draw a square, draw a circle in the square, draw a square in the circle, bisect each edge of the square to make four little squares, put a circle in each, and a square inside of each of those – on and on to “human infinity”, meaning the size of the brush and the painter’s skill.  That is the framework of it, though they are more artistic than simply squares and circles.

Go out into your back yard or your local park, and look around you.  There are trees, there is grass, there is dirt.  Walk up to the tree and take a look.  Hmmm, leaves, let’s pluck one.  Check it out, the leaf has veins and ribs and patterns and this curious texture.  Pull out a magnifier- deeper still. Take a section and put it under a microscope – see the inner structure, the bacteria who maybe live inside, the DNA, RNA, eventually the atomic structure and the universe, all in a leaf.  The mandala is the wisdom of the ages, drawn on a piece of paper. What is small is large, what is large is small.

So, you have a stone and you want to make a ring.  All design is really about one thing – elements and transitions.  The parts, and how the parts are tied together with each other.  You can make a bezel for the stone, get a piece of wire for a shank and stick it on the bezel, and there’s your ring.  But let’s apply the concept of the mandala to it, shall we?  Let’s draw a circle inside the square that is our bezel.  That could be anything that takes our bezel to another level (I told you I couldn’t teach you how to design, really).  Cutting the sides into a half bezel or multiple prongs, engraving the sides, putting and engine-turning type thing around it.  Then divide it again – carve your multiple prongs into sculptural shapes.  Then divide it again – enamel them or set tiny stones into the junctions.  The same goes for the shank, but more importantly the same goes for the transition.  Instead of soldering a wire shank onto a bezel, why not make it flow up into it?  Or split it so it’s being held in something like roots or vines?  And again, divide – blend, enamel, texture, deeper and deeper.  This whole thought works in the literal sense – much classical jewelry is literally space divided and redivided and then enameled or engraved with a pattern, all very rigid and structured.  Not very different from an actual mandala, really.  More importantly it works on a more conceptual level, too.  Instead of setting a cabochon in a bezel, set it into a custom setting – take it deeper.  Instead of bending a wire into a shank, carve a shank into a certain, definite shape.  Or take the entire process away from settings and shanks at all, and make a sculptural piece – that’s what happens when you pay greater attention to transitions.

All of the examples I’ve given are simple – they’re also pretty common in jewelry.  But the point is to understand what you are doing, and to do it with a will, not by chance.  Everything on everything can go deeper – you can solder down a silver bead, or make that bead a diamond or a carved “bead” or enamel or anything.  All for a simple bead.  Not so simple, when you think about it.  And taking the concept literally can merely make for ornate or even “busy” work.  This is just to say, “I need a hinge – it could be knuckles soldered on a plate, but what if I took that deeper, think a little farther, divide the concept into it’s parts, and make those parts into something more than just knuckles on a plate………..?”  Think about that leaf, that’s really so much more than just a leaf, in the end.

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johndonivan

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