Who Are These Designers?

As a graduate of the Dokuz Eylül University Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Textile and Fashion Accessory Design, I have been asking this question to both myself and the industry for years: Who are these designers?

Even after four intense years of formal education covering leather goods, footwear, bag, and jewelry design, finding my professional direction was not easy.

After graduating from the cycle of late-night deadlines, workshops, practical applications, and endless projects, I realized that true education often begins only after leaving the school gates. During my university years, I focused on footwear design, convinced that this would be my path. I completed two consecutive summer internships in Istanbul and Izmir. My entire focus was on shoes.

However, once I entered the professional world, I realized that the diversity of new design production and the space allocated to design in the footwear industry were not as broad as I had imagined, especially from a commercial perspective. That is when I shifted my focus to jewelry design.

Because the jewelry sector offered one of the widest "playgrounds" for a designer in terms of production variety. Perhaps this choice was the result of a much older story. My childhood was spent painting, playing with Legos, and admiring jewelry. I would make shapes out of mud, create ornaments with plaster molds, study knitting and lace patterns, and gift my creations to our neighbors. My late grandmother would often say to me: "This girl has a wandering mind (is indecisive)."

Back then, neither she nor I knew that all these seemingly disconnected interests would one day merge into a single profession.

I moved to Istanbul in 2011 and started my first corporate job. If the city gave me my first culture shock, the industry gave me the second. I had received design education; I could sketch, develop collections, and make aesthetic decisions. But the company expected me to prepare the patterns (molds) for every design I sketched. I didn't know how to prepare technical patterns. I tried to close this gap with the support of my designer colleagues during the nine months we worked together. Just as I got the hang of it, the company began delaying salaries, and I left after receiving an offer from another firm.

The second company had another surprise in store for me. I thought I would only design, but I learned I would also be responsible for all produced patterns. Fortunately, because I had produced and sold my own costume jewelry for years, I was no stranger to assembly and production processes. I developed hundreds of models using leftover patterns and semi-precious stones, establishing a solid place for myself in the company. Later, when that firm decided to relocate, I received an offer from a prestigious international brand and continued my career there.

My third stop was the gold industry. This was actually my biggest dream. When my boss said, "You will both design and learn pattern making," I was over the moon. However, a sentence a master pattern maker in my office told me still rings in my ears: "If you learn pattern making, what will we eat?" The pattern training never happened. Years later, looking back, I realized that the master saw a potential in me that perhaps I hadn't yet seen in myself. Today, I design using 3D modeling programs, prepare my own patterns, and work with full command of production processes.

From the outside, a jewelry designer is perceived as someone who designs, creates the mold, and manufactures the product alone. Yet, the reality is very different. We are like doctors who graduate from medical school and branch out into different specialties. Some enter the sector with an arts education, some from technical schools or courses, and others grow up directly in workshops. Some start with bench work (master goldsmithing), some with computer-aided design.

Sit twenty jewelry designers at the same table; it is highly likely that all twenty will have different working methods. Some only sketch by hand. Some use 3D technical modeling programs. Some work with digital sculpting programs like ZBrush. Some have offices and wax printers, selling their designs not as finished products but as production-ready models. Some work in firms, some in their own workshops, some solely via e-commerce, and others work entirely freelance. Their areas of expertise differ as well. Some specialize in earrings, some in bracelets, some in jewelry sets, some in men’s jewelry, and others only in specific technical production processes.

Therefore, expecting a jewelry designer to be an expert in every field is as meaningless as asking an orthopedic surgeon to treat a stomach ache. We may all be in the same profession, but we are not doing the same job. Today, some of the world's most advanced manufacturing technologies are used in the jewelry sector. This diversity and versatility are among the greatest advantages of Turkish designers.

Moreover, I do not believe we are behind our international colleagues in terms of talent. On the contrary, we often produce much more creative and solution-oriented work. I wish a stronger bridge could be built between educational curricula and the industry. However, there are significant obstacles. The jewelry sector is a high-cost field. Licensed design software, production equipment, 3D printers, and workshop investments are not at a level many educational institutions can reach.

That is why a significant portion of young designers have to go through a second education process when they start the profession. Yet, raising a good jewelry designer is not just about teaching a program. Learning a program is often as long and difficult a process as learning a new language. It is backed by years of experience, hundreds of failed attempts, countless hours of overtime, and an unquenchable curiosity.

Unfortunately, the industry has lost many talented designers over the years because creativity is not a continuously producible resource; it needs to be nourished, developed, and valued. Evaluating a designer solely by the model they draw is like thinking an orchestra consists of only a single note.

Yet, behind every sketch lies years of accumulation, and behind every collection lies hundreds of hours of invisible labor. Perhaps one day, designers will be valued not only for the products they create, but also for the knowledge, experience, and creativity that make those products possible. Because what makes jewelry valuable is not the gold or the stone. What gives it meaning is that it was first born in the mind of a designer.