My experience as a freelance jewellery designer in the UK.
I have been a part of the jewellery industry in the UK since 2004 in one role or another. Since graduating from Central St Martins in 2018 I have been working as a freelance jewellery designer as well as designing pieces for my own brand and for private clients.
As a freelancer, I have been lucky enough to work with brands in the UK, Switzerland and in the middle east, designing collections, one-off pieces and creating content for social media. Sometimes this involves travelling abroad to be involved in the manufacturing process, visit workshops, select gemstones etc.
Being a freelancer means using various different skills, though you will often use one or two most of the time. In my case I use my CAD and hand jewellery rendering skills most often, I also frequently use sketching and hand drawing in the early stages of my designs as well as some prototyping. Also, depending on the client, I am often asked to advise on finding suppliers, manufactures, marketing etc.
Some of the freelance work I do comes from word of mouth, people I have gotten to know from my 16 or so years in the trade, though an increasing amount comes via online chancels - social media and freelancing platforms.
When working with people who come from recommendations they are often people with some experience of the jewellery trade, whilst often clients from freelancing platforms will have no prior experience.
If I had two pieces of advice for people starting a jewellery business, who don’t have experience in the jewellery industry, it would be: Don’t run before you can walk and DONT GIVE PEOPLE PRICES & TIMESCALES UNTIL YOU KNOW EXACTLY HOW MUCH ITS GOING TO COST YOU AND HOW LONG IT WILL TAKE.
This second one should seem obvious but it’s amazing how often it happens and it often costs a lot of money and causes a lot of stress.
When you’re starting a new venture its best to start off really small and its the same with jewellery. There will always be things that crop up that you dont expect so dont take too much on. Some jewellery brands start with just one or two products and this would be my advice. You can, and must, always add new products to your range, dont be obsessed with having a product in every category to start with. Let your business and expertise build. (unless you have a huge budget)
Getting even one ring made can involve 8 different people. The designer, the 3D printer, the caster, the diamond mounter, the stone supplier, the diamond setter, the polisher, the assay office etc You need to find the people that can do these jobs and organise when and how they are going to do the work, how you are going to get the work to them etc.
Working with small jewellery brands
In the world of fine jewellery, most brands are very, very small, often its an individual working alone or with a group of freelancers and I have found this to be the case with most of the projects I have been involved in.
This set up means you are normally working very closely with the business founder & creative lead who will want to have significant input into the design process, so communication is very important. It is also important to have a conversation about how many changes to the design you could be expected to make and when these are to be made by.
From the designer’s point of view, having a detailed brief is a really good start with as many specifics about the brand or collection as possible. This may sound harsh but if a new client can’t be bothered to sit down and write a page about their new brand then they probably haven’t thought that deeply about it and they will be hard work.
As a customer, it will save you time and money if you give a designer as much info as possible. Time is money. If you need your designer to do something that wasn’t in the original brief they will charge for the time it takes.
Discuss availability and time management
For instance, I work with clients remotely and onsite, I might be available all day one day but booked to work onsite for the next two so won’t have time to respond to emails or make changes to a design.
The first project is the hardest.
When you’re working with a new person there will always be some kinks to work out. Everybody works slightly differently and has different expectations. For the first project set out goals and deadline to keep you on track but try and be flexible.
