Investigating the use of digital technology in Jewellery Design: A thematic analysis

Digital technologies are one of the most important driving forces in the economy today (Brynjolfsson, E. & McAfee, A., Race against the Machine: How the digital revolution is accelerating innovation, driving productivity, and irreversibly transforming employment and the economy. Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2012); thus, an understanding of these phenomena and a discussion of their influences have to be developed. Nonetheless, there is a distinct lack of questioning in regards to what influence digital technology has on the creativity of designers. As a field, jewellery design is heavily associated with traditional handcraft values such as labour, material and complexity. And such values are being challenged by digital technologies. This study employed qualitative approaches in order to explore an analysis on how digital technologies (CAD, CAM, RP, AR) influence creativity within the jewellery design field. With open-ended interviews, the professional jewellery designers’ practice were investigated from the viewpoint of the designers, while identifying their shared patterns, behaviours and the role that digital design and manufacturing has in their practice. The results of the analysis highlight that in jewellery creativity, we may have new attributes to add to existing creativity theory. The designers interviewed agreed that some of the crucial elements of creativity were curiosity, playfulness, experimentation of process and materials, freedom, fun, innovation, having no fear and improvisation. However, this is not necessarily reflected in creativity research.