Digital tools at the workbench

November 11, 2015

I’ve spent my entire adult life working in some form or another on a computer. I make my living as web developer and designer, so it’s only natural for me to look towards digital tools when designing jewelry. (Sometimes. Sometimes a sketchbook is a better tool.)

I use three things, for the most part: Paper by 53, my iPad with 53’s Pencil stylus, and Adobe Illustrator. The workflow usually looks something like this: I start in Paper, sketching. If I’m doing something I want to run through the CNC mill, I push the sketch from Paper to Illustrator, create vector lines and clean it up.

Otherwise, the iPad comes into the studio with me as a point of reference, and I go from there. If I’m not creating a vector, though, the iPad is usually just a place to dump quick ideas before I forget them. Why not a sketchbook? Because then I lose the things and get mad at having lost their contents as well. Using digital paper, everything lives in the cloud and I can get to it even if I do something stupid, like leave my iPad on an airplane.