Jewellery Designer

Q&A with Jemma McFarlane

What is your job title?

Head of Design

What does your job involve?

Designing bespoke jewellery with and for our customers
Create CAD (computer aided design) models of jewellery to be made
Liaising with stone suppliers
Designing ready to wear jewellery to be sold in the shop
Keeping our website up to date
Managing and delegating the running of our social media
Managing the other design and shop staff
Liaising with onsite goldsmiths about the making of our products

What does an average day look like?

Set up the studio for the days customers
Check through all our social media and respond to any enquiries
Delegate roles of the day to staff
I would usually create at least one 3D CAD model if not more, a day
Typically we have between 1-6 design appointments, stone viewing appointments, 3D wax viewing appointments with customers in a day but this varies. Saturday is the busiest day.

What qualifications and experiences enabled you to achieve your position?

GCSE Art, GCSE Textiles; A-Levels: Art and Music; AS Levels: Maths, Product Design and Geography; Degree: BA Design for Industry

I took the skills and knowledge that learnt from my degree and applied them to my desired discipline. I started at the bottom as a jewellery design assistant for a large bespoke jewellers. This is where I learnt most of my jewellery knowledge, how to interact with and design for customers. I worked my way up to be a designer and then decided to further my knowledge by completing a jewellery making course in London. This enabled me to bring all my skills together and help set up the design department for a small jewellers which at the time was Dytham esq jewellers and is now known as Dytham Jewellery Designers. I also taught myself a specific CAD program called Matrix as I needed it to further my career and couldn't afford a course.

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