Central Saint Martins: Where the World’s Top Designers Come From

Ever wondered how some of the World’s top jewellery designers get to where they are? Most assume great designers were born with a god-given talent and that moving into creating beautiful jewellery pieces came easily.
Whilst their natural talent may have been in abundance, all designers – even the World’s best – have honed their skills through hard work and, more often than not, excellent tuition at design institutions.
Lolo & Galago has many links to one of these in particular, with several of our World class designers having graduated from the prestigious Central SaintMartins in London, widely recognised as one of the greatest design universities in the World.

We caught up with Caroline Broadhead, CSM’s BA Jewellery Design Course Leader, to find out how the World’s future Creative Directors are taught, and why she believes CSM stands out. 

Unlike scientific subjects, with design there are no set rules. Nevertheless, Caroline very much believes there is a process to be followed. “It’s about looking, thinking and then combining those ideas” she explains. “Designers need to have a great awareness of their interests.” To help students do this and keep constantly engaged with the World around them and its inspirations, all CSM students keep a book of inspiring text, images and photos throughout their time at the university. 

Whilst every student approaches design in their own way, Caroline explains it is important that they understand a process from initial concept right through to final design. This means developing an original idea, looking at technical details and materials – and using this technical understanding to present the concept into a first designs. Then, test the design both visually as well as physically. This allows them to expand their concept and keep iterating until a final design is created. 

With so many stages, we wondered what the hardest part of being a designer is. “The hardest part of the process is the design development: Taking your initial ideas from your head and creating that first physical concept from those ideas is tricky for a lot of students” explains Caroline. To help with this, students are given project briefs, in which they are given very narrow guidelines for a design. This forces the students to delve deeper into that specific subject rather than take a broad approach, causing them to use their imagination to an even greater level.

This is all well and good, but of course a truly talented designer creates beautiful work not only for themselves but also for their customer, and this is something that needs to be ingrained into all future designers’ ways of thinking. Caroline explains that all students are encouraged to have an ongoing dialogue with clients. One of the great things about CSM is that many fashion and jewellery firms get involved – currently they have 13 companies working on projects with students – which allows them to practice working with their customer and learning how to anticipate what will be popular.

So what makes CSM stand out amongst most other universities? “London is inspirational,” says Caroline. “There is so much to be taken from the city, and it attract sambitious and talented students from the outset, so we are starting with a lot of raw talent. We also work with industry regularly, which gives great connections and real-life experience.”

We were curious to know what the head of jewellery design thinks are the most important qualities in a designer – we were given three. “A positive attitude. You can’t give up and have to keep working. Energy and an excitement for your surroundings, awareness of trends and a feel of today’s styles.”

We couldn’t agree more, they are all qualities we see in abundance with Lolo & Galago’s designers, and from this we have created ground breaking collections that are true exotic luxury, and we are sure much of this has come thanks to CSM’s excellent early influence.