I started off with a questionnaire that I handed to a variety of people. I decided to do this so that I could aim my jewellery at the correct target market that would buy it. I also wanted to see what was the most popular jewellery and the reason that people bought jewellery. I used serverymonkey.com to create my survey as then I was able to post it online via social media for another platform for my work to be seen.
(Author's own photo)
(Author's own photo)
I did a total of 10 questions as I didn't want to overload my audience with too many questions. I got a really good response that helped me with my design. The majority of boys didn't really buy or wear jewellery. This made my audience easy to choose just girl jewellery. Out of all the jewellery that girls wore and bought, rings were the most popular. therefor I decided to aim my designs mainly on rings.
To have improved this survey I could have then just aimed a survey on rings to see what designs are the most popular amongst the female population, however due to time I didn't and just decided to base my brand on dress rings, as from my previous survey the girls bought jewellery for a special occasion and didn't wear it everyday. This allowed my brand to be more expensive and more outrageous in the designs.
(Author's own photo)
I recorded my results in a tally chart and highlighted the most popular answers to help me remember my brand values.
(Author's own photo)
I then did some secondary research of the top 10 jewellery brands to see what their brand values are and to compare and contrast their branding techniques.
(Author's own photo)
I analysed their websites and found out that most of the websites use the colour black or white with a colour that represents their brand such as tiffany, uses white and turquoise for its brand, Cartier uses black and red for its colours. These colours all represent expensive and royalty which is what their brand message is. This helped me narrow down my colour palette for my brand.
(Author's own photo)
(Author's own photo)
(Author's own photo)
Some of these websites also had jewellery for men on their front pages, however this wasn't relevant to me as the audience I had chosen was female. Their was also videos on most of the websites that shows a more higher end brand as they have more money to make videos that interacts with the audience.
(Author's own photo)
I then looked in magazine for print advertising to see the layout of posters and again what colours were used. The print adverts I found were for more hughstreet brands and generally had more colour in them. I found this interesting as they had a totally different message to the websites of the higher end brands.
(Author's own photo)
(Author's own photo)
(Author's own photo)
(Author's own photo)
Exhibitions
The Design Museum
Paul Smith
I also went to the paul smith exhibition at the design museum that was really exciting and helped me with my project as the brand was carried out throughout the whole exhibition through the colours used. The font for Paul Smith has also been used a multiple of times so it is highly recognised.
(Author's own photo)
(Author's own photo)
(Author's own photo)
(Author's own photo)
Berlinische Gallerie
On our trip in Berlin we visited some galleries.
Dorothy Iannone
http://www.berlinischegalerie.de/en/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/dorothy-iannone/
This particular artist didn't really help me in my research as I the message didn't link, however you could tell this artist had a strong meaning behind her work, showing her 'brand' and thoughts behind her work and what she wanted her audience to understand when they looked at her work. This showed me that I wanted my brand to be understood just by looking at it.
Franz Ackermann
(Author's own photo)
(Author's own photo)
I really liked this artists work as the colour, patterns and textures really caught my eye. This demonstrated to me that I wanted my brand to be eye catching and bright as to stand out from other brands that use limited colours and usually black or white.
V&A
Jewellery
http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/j/jewellery/
The V&A helped me look at jewellery design from the past and from different cultures. This allowed me to narrow down what jewellery I wanted to sell in my shop and put together a customer profile of who I wanted to sell to. As I wanted my products to be higher market I thought the jewellery helped as there were precious gemstones and expensive royal jewellery that sparked off ideas for my brand.
