Rajeshwari Ayyar Karthik, our design columnist, is a designer of several years' standing. After playing midwife to a particularly successful Indian Jewellery brand, she now designs and manufactures her own jewellery.

Having seen the role texture, colour and form play in relation to design, it is imperative that we as designers understand the need for detail in design.

Each of the factors mentioned above -- as seen in earlier articles in Solitaire -- is independently an important element in design. However, mere incorporation of a texture or colour or another element while designing is not an ‘end’ in itself. It is how well all or any of these has been integrated into the product, and moreover, to what detail this has been done which is crucial.

Every design need not utilise texture or colour as a special element. In some cases the emphasis could be on some other aspect – say, the setting of the stone, or a commercial decision regarding total weight. In either case, with proper detailing, it could contribute crucially to the success of the end product.

Every designer/manufacturer/company should focus on the design detailing, which is often ignored in assembly line production. This has resulted in business setbacks, especially export-related, where the focus on ‘detailing to the T’ for specific clientele is lost. This could also be a reason why the Indian jewellery industry as a whole has struggled to rise above being a service industry (though there are notable exceptions). Standardised detailing conventions can really help the industry at large. This has yielded benefits to the industry in Hong Kong and Bangkok where models are made to great detail. While the Indian industry has made significant progress over the last decade in product development, greater things could be achieved if we could focus more on the finer details related to design… a viewpoint borne out by personal experience!

Designers play a valuable role in generating, communicating, interpreting and integrating ideas. The ability of designers to conceive objects in three dimensions and visualise them can contribute significantly to the quality of communication between the different product development functions, and thus to the quality of the product development process on the whole and the product ultimately.

Vis-a-vis Design

In design, detailing refers to finalising the particulars of a product, including finishes, mechanisms and controls. Attention to detail is important in the design process. As the German architect Mies Van der Rohe once said, “God is in the details.” For a designer it becomes mandatory to know how the whole product goes together. If you don’t know how it goes together, then you can’t very well detail it. In practice, poor detailing is often reinterpreted by the manufacturer in ways that may not adhere to the original design intent. Materials, methods and the sequence of fabrication must be rigorously and explicitly defined. The basic elements of proper detailing are fairly straightforward. First, the detail must be congruent with the design intent -- functionally and aesthetically. Imagining the detail in its completed form is only possible by properly considering the production/fabrication sequence. Sequence is implicit to details. They must be construed in the order in which their constituent elements are to be fabricated/produced.

Next, an appropriate viewpoint and representation must be selected for explicating the detail. Two-dimensional, orthogonal projections are seldom as effective as three-dimensional representations. The scale of the detail is especially important when critical tolerances must be maintained. Dimensions and notes should provide essential instructions without causing confusion. Finally, the details need to be appropriately related to the other working drawings and specifications to promote a coherent and consistent means of representing the jewellery production process.

As a minimum, traditional two-dimensional design conventions must be enhanced by adopting parametric digital design tools. Moving to three-dimensional solid modelling imposes detailing discipline and forces the designer to explicitly deal with materials, tolerances and assembly line manufacturing. It also opens the possibility of interacting directly with numerically controlled machinery, altogether bypassing negotiations with an unwilling and/or unable workforce. This system is now being adopted to a large extent in various jewellery factories in India.

While the Indian industry has made significant progress over the last decade in product development, greater things could be achieved if we could focus more on the finer details related to design… a viewpoint borne out by personal experience!!

Vis-a-vis Fabrication and Manufacturing

It is important that the company take into account local preferences (be it domestic or foreign) through interactions with clients/market research, etc., for locally customising the design of the product with respect to certain details at the design as well as the fabrication level. For example, the quality of diamonds and the metal weight become an important factor in determining the cost, which per se would determine the success of a price-point product.

Cost/value calculations based upon local feedback should then be used to estimate if this would lead to increasing sales. All assumptions should be double-checked by field exposure, more so when dealing with overseas markets and foreign cultures and idioms.

It is essential to understand that a top Indian product (e.g., a mangalsutra) will not necessarily sell abroad using the same criteria as at home. A singular global product design can exist, but better rewards usually lie in locally targeted customisation. Finding the correct aesthetics, ergonomics, idiomatic nuances and final detailing of the product’s design is mandatory in the localisation of any product, in addition to the adaptation of the functional and technical requirements. Undertaking pre-research, getting local feedback on designs, and avoiding compromising on requirements (like details pertaining to weight of product in terms of metal and /or stones, the reverse side of the pieces which are unseen when worn, details of links to attain the right flexibility, setting details in the case of studded jewellery, the right sensitive pricing, etc.) are all essential steps towards creating a successful product.

The Indian Scenario

It is ironic that a country which was known throughout history for its importance to detailing in jewellery (e.g., the Nizam’s jewellery) seems to have lost this talent over the years. Times have changed and jewellery is no longer completely handcrafted as it used to be. Different possibilities of batch processing have replaced purely handcrafted jewellery. After liberalisation began in the early 1990s, India developed a vibrant jewellery manufacturing industry for exports, which to a large extent involved customised designing. Unfortunately, since the whole system then, almost a decade ago, concentrated on volume which directly affected profits, the value aspect (design detail, product development) was not given too much consideration.

This continued for a while though over the last few years the Indian jewellery industry has realised that the need of the hour is innovative product solutions, without which it will be a challenge to retain its edge in exports and not lose out to other countries that have quickly managed to churn out volume/value products to the same markets. Having grasped the potential and possible threats, the industry has now committed itself to value and is looking at the product development process in earnest.

Simplifying the product structure while giving due consideration to choices of materials and production processes can have a profound impact on overall costs. A careful consideration of this design detail can directly and indirectly affect the total cost of a product.

While the decision to buy a product is a complex one, it must be kept in mind that this decision is guided by several factors and design detail is one amongst them.

In the future, commercial designers in India will use computers to perform numerous and complex simulations of their design concepts, rapidly refine the design artifact in a collaborative multi-disciplinary environment and take full advantage of computer numerically controlled machines to execute their work.

While that takes effect, today’s designers have to use existing means to ensure that design detailing continues to add value to the products made here.