This week was the first NYC Jewelry Week, and it was a busy one for me — I spoke on two industry panels (as well as one the previous Friday) and had a big jewelry sale.
Amy Elliott of trade publication JCK covered Tuesday’s panel, “Making Your Breaks in Fine Jewelry: Digital Edition,” which was organized and moderated by Elisabeth Austin, creative director of DiamondRunway.com. I’m on the right, closest to Elisabeth, in the photo below.
As Amy pointed out, our panel’s message about computer-aided design — aka CAD — got a little muddled!
To clarify, these days pretty much everyone uses computers in some way, including jewelry designers. While my top-of-the-line, museum-worthy designs — such as my Maneater collection — still require hand-carved wax models to get the right look, I use CAD for other work. But this panel was for career advice, so the initial point that Kim Nelson, chair of the Jewelry Design department at FIT, made was that while you’re expected to know CAD for certain jobs in the jewelry industry, you don’t necessarily want to make it a centerpiece of your resume. CAD programs are tools, the use of which is near-universal and, accordingly, dropping in salary potential. If you want be a contender for the best opportunities, you have to market yourself appropriately. Are you a brilliant designer, project manager, or production person (who just so happens to be great with CAD)? The bigger picture is what you need to focus on. When I’m hiring, I don’t care about the particulars of the tools you use: I want to know if you can get my very complicated project done. I hope that helps!
In case you missed what was on the blog this week, you didn’t miss all that much.
- Tuesday, November 13: I shared a video promoting the group jewelry sale I participated in on Wednesday.
- Thursday, November 15: I had a good time teasing Eryn for this photo we took at the sale.
Tucked into Tuesday’s post was an interview I did this summer with the fabulous Manon Crespi about the Maneater collection, and that’s definitely worth checking out.
Now I’ve got to hunt down photos from my other panels, which were both for Initiatives in Art and Culture. Dang, I’m hardly going to know what to do with myself this week without several panels to attend!