Integral Design

One of the key design elements I try to incorporate in my work is what I might call integral design. Integral meaning "essential to completeness" according to Merriam-Webster, also "lacking nothing essential", and "composed of constituent parts", the constituent parts also being essential. With that as a starting point the work of defining what is essential witin the context of the project requirements begins, followed for me, by eliminating what is non-essential, and then creating style and beauty from only the essential elments left to work with.

This can be a rigorous exercise, but it is also quite freeing, because it works as a trick that reduces the burden of  personal investment in the decision making process; its not up to me after all, it is about what is essential, according to some external objective criteria. Of course, as I said, this is a trick because that external objective criteria is subjective (objective as seen by me).

It is helpful though as an impetus to begin the process and also as a landmark to stay on course as the project develops. The jewelry pieces are illustrative of the integral quality I'm trying to describe, partly becuase they are simple, but also becuase jewelry is so associated with ornamentation of the form as a defining component. These pieces are about eliminating that ornamentation in favor of the "essentialness" as its own form of embellishment.