Where the Digital Meets the Physical: A Jewellery Design Approach

Jewellery is a design practice heavily associated with traditional handcraft values such as labour, material and complexity. Such values are being challenged by the current use of digital tools and technologies in the industry. While the pandemic has exhilarated our immersion in the digital world, we have observed a change in the design field where individual designers of brands deliver to consumers a blend of experiential and entertainment values. The project Let’s Get Phygital was set out as a response to the new reality we all had to get used to, exploring how jewellery could exist in different and unconventional realms. This paper presents the results of an experimental collaborative project between 22 jewellery design students from London College of Fashion (LCF) and Estonia Academy of the Arts (EKA). The students were given a brief and challenged with subverting conventional design and manufacturing approaches, to investigate how contemporary jewellery can exist in non-physical forms and develop digital jewellery related to their personal projects in response. The project’s main objective was to support students develop a creative design approach while implementing digital technologies in their own practice. Using Augmented Reality (AR) filters for social media platforms as a tool to directly interact with their audience, the cohort explored digital possibilities and digital wearability within contemporary jewellery