Market Research Is the Enemy of the Artist: Why I Don't Design Jewellery by Committee

Most successful companies want to know what their customers want.

They conduct market research.

Analyse trends.

Study competitors.

Look at sales data.

Run focus groups.

Find the thing that's selling and make more of it.

From a business perspective, that makes perfect sense.

From an artist's perspective, I think it can be dangerous.

I've spent more than 30 years making jewellery, and the older I get, the more convinced I become that market research can be the enemy of creativity.

Because if you begin every design by asking people what they want, you'll usually end up making something they've already seen.

And I'm not particularly interested in making jewellery people have already seen.

The Audience Comes Last

There's a philosophy associated with producer Rick Rubin that I love:

The audience comes last.

The idea is essentially that the audience can only judge something in relation to what they've experienced before.

Ask people what they want and they'll naturally describe variations of things they already understand.

A slightly different version.

A different colour.

A bigger diamond.

A smaller one.

But genuinely new ideas don't always arrive because somebody requested them.

Sometimes they arrive because somebody made something they felt compelled to make.

Then everybody else catches up.

That's an incredibly important distinction.

People Don't Always Know What They Want

Steve Jobs expressed a similar philosophy when discussing product design: people don't necessarily know what they want until you show it to them.

I've always related to that as a jewellery designer.

A client might come into my workshop convinced they want a very specific engagement ring.

Then I put something completely different on their hand.

Suddenly:

“What's that?”

Now we're having an interesting conversation.

They didn't ask for it because they didn't know it existed.

How could they?

That's the problem with designing entirely from market research.

Market research can tell you what people already like. It can't necessarily tell you what they're going to fall in love with next.

The Problem With Asking “What Is Trending?”

I understand why jewellery companies obsess over trends.

What engagement rings are trending?

What diamond shape is trending?

Are oval diamonds still popular?

Are chunky rings coming back?

Is yellow gold in?

Are hidden halos out?

What are celebrities wearing?

What is TikTok buying?

Then companies respond.

If ovals are selling, make more oval engagement rings.

If bezel settings are trending, suddenly everybody has a bezel collection.

If chunky gold becomes fashionable, make chunky gold.

And slowly the entire industry begins looking at the same references.

Then wondering why everything looks the same.

Market Research Creates Better Products

Here's the uncomfortable part.

Market research works.

If your objective is to create a successful commercial product, understanding what customers want is incredibly useful.

I'm not arguing otherwise.

It can help you price things correctly.

Understand demand.

Reduce risk.

Improve an existing product.

Make something easier to sell.

All useful things.

But I'm not convinced it necessarily creates better art.

Art has a slightly different responsibility.

Sometimes it needs to give people something they didn't ask for.

An Artist Should Be Looking Forward

There's a Noel Gallagher interview I've always liked.

When he's asked, essentially, why he doesn't simply make another Oasis album, his response is that he'd moved on from that when he left the band.

I completely understand that.

An artist doesn't particularly want to keep looking backwards. You want to know what happens next.

If I create an engagement ring that becomes successful, the sensible commercial response is obvious.

Make another.

Then another.

Change the diamond.

Change the metal.

Put pavé on it.

Make a smaller one.

Make a larger one.

Produce twenty variations because we've already established that people like it.

There's just one problem.

I've already made that ring.

Creatively, I want to know what comes next.

Success Can Become a Creative Trap

This is something I think a lot of designers eventually encounter.

You develop a recognisable style.

People start buying it.

Then people start expecting it.

Suddenly the thing that gave you creative freedom becomes a set of rules.

You become known for something, so everybody wants more of that something.

And commercially, you'd be mad not to give it to them.

But creatively?

That's where you have to be careful.

There's an idea often associated with David Bowie that I strongly relate to: once you start creating primarily to satisfy what people expect from you, rather than following where your own creative instincts are taking you, you risk losing something important.

I don't want to become a factory producing Karl Karter-style jewellery.

That sounds like a strange thing for Karl Karter to say.

But it's true.

Go Slightly Out of Your Depth

Bowie also gave one of the best descriptions of creativity I've ever heard.

He compared the creative process to walking into the sea.

When your feet are comfortably touching the bottom, you're in familiar territory.

Move a little further out.

Eventually your feet are just leaving the bottom.

You're slightly uncomfortable.

Slightly unsure.

That's where something interesting starts happening.

I love that idea.

If everything feels completely safe when I'm designing, I'm probably not pushing the idea far enough.

Not so far that the jewellery becomes ridiculous.

I'm still a goldsmith.

The ring still has to work.

The diamond still has to remain attached.

But creatively, I want to be slightly outside my comfort zone.

Thirty Years of Experience Should Give You More Freedom, Not Less

There's an irony to experience.

You spend decades learning rules.

How jewellery is constructed.

How thick something needs to be.

How stones behave.

How metal moves.

How settings fail.

How proportions work.

Eventually you become technically confident.

But what do you do with that knowledge?

Repeat what you already know works?

I think that's a waste.

The point of learning the rules is eventually having enough understanding to start bending them intelligently.

My experience as a goldsmith doesn't make me want to design safer jewellery.

It gives me the confidence to explore where the edges are.

Play Is Serious

Ricky Gervais has talked about how much of what he's written, created or discovered has come from playing.

That resonates with me enormously.

Because that's often how design actually happens.

Not in a meeting.

Not because I've identified a gap in the engagement-ring market.

Not because somebody sent me a spreadsheet showing that 37-year-old women are currently interested in geometric platinum jewellery.

I'm playing.

Drawing.

Moving shapes around.

Cutting pieces of metal.

Looking at architecture.

Making something that doesn't quite work.

Changing it.

Putting two things together that probably shouldn't go together.

Then suddenly:

There it is.

That's the idea.

Play Looks Unproductive Until It Produces Something

This is why creativity can be difficult within a conventional business.

Businesses like measurable productivity.

What did you make today?

How many designs?

How many products?

How many sales?

What was the conversion rate?

Play doesn't work like that.

You can spend an entire day exploring something that goes nowhere.

Commercially, you've achieved nothing.

Creatively, you might have learned the thing that allows you to make something extraordinary six months later.

That's difficult to put into a spreadsheet.

Some of My Best Ideas Start Somewhere Completely Unrelated to Jewellery

I rarely look exclusively at jewellery when I'm designing jewellery.

That would be incredibly limiting.

I'm interested in architecture.

Modernism.

Art Deco.

Brutalism.

Japanese construction.

Sculpture.

Painting.

Furniture.

Geometry.

Negative space.

The work of architects such as Carlo Scarpa has influenced entire collections.

Japanese woodworking and bamboo scaffolding have influenced others.

Sometimes I'm looking at something that has absolutely nothing to do with jewellery and suddenly realise:

That could become a ring.

That's the moment I'm interested in.

Stop Looking at Other Jewellers

This is something I'd tell any young jewellery designer.

Of course you need to understand your industry.

Know the history.

Study great jewellers.

Understand construction.

Look at extraordinary work.

But eventually:

Stop looking at jewellery.

Look somewhere else.

If every jewellery designer follows the same jewellery designers on Instagram, uses the same Pinterest boards, sees the same trend reports and receives the same algorithmic recommendations, what do we think is going to happen?

We're all going to make the same jewellery.

And increasingly, I think we are.

Why Does Everything Look the Same?

Walk around jewellery shops today and you'll see a lot of very competent jewellery.

Beautifully photographed.

Beautifully rendered.

Beautifully branded.

But increasingly familiar.

Part of the problem is technology.

Part is social media.

Part is commercial risk.

But I think part of it is that we're all being given access to the same information.

Algorithms tell us what's popular.

Market research tells companies what sells.

Social media tells designers what gets likes.

Analytics tell us what people click.

Then everybody optimises.

Optimisation is incredibly useful for selling things.

I'm not sure it's particularly useful for creating them.

The Algorithm Is a Form of Market Research

This is the modern version of the focus group.

Post two rings.

One gets 10,000 views.

The other gets 800.

Which one should you make more of?

The algorithm has answered the question.

And that's dangerous.

Because perhaps the second ring is actually the interesting one.

Perhaps people simply haven't learned how to look at it yet.

Perhaps it needs time.

Perhaps it's leading somewhere.

If you immediately abandon every idea that doesn't perform well on Instagram, eventually Instagram becomes your creative director.

I can't think of anything more depressing.

The Client Isn't Always Right

That's probably another terrible marketing statement.

But hear me out.

The client is absolutely right about what they like.

I'm never going to tell somebody:

“No, you're wrong. You actually love this ring.”

That would be insane.

But a client doesn't necessarily know how to design the best version of what they want.

That's why they've come to a designer.

If all I do is execute exactly what somebody asks for without contributing anything, I'm not really designing.

I'm manufacturing instructions.

Bespoke jewellery should be a collaboration.

You bring your taste.

Your story.

Your references.

Your personality.

I bring thirty years of jewellery knowledge, my own aesthetic and occasionally the confidence to tell you:

I think we can do something better.

You Don't Hire an Artist to Agree With You

If you commission an architect, you presumably want some architecture.

If you commission an artist, you presumably want some of the artist.

So if you commission a jewellery designer, why would you want them to disappear completely from the work?

I want my client's personality in the piece.

But mine will probably be there too.

That's what makes collaboration interesting.

Otherwise, you could just select options from a drop-down menu.

I'm Not Trying to Give Everybody What They Want

This is perhaps the central point.

I don't think an independent designer should try to appeal to everybody.

The moment you do that, you start removing all the things that might offend somebody.

The unusual proportion.

Remove it.

The strange setting.

Too risky.

The sharp edge.

Soften it.

The asymmetry.

Straighten it.

Eventually you've created something nobody dislikes.

Unfortunately, nobody particularly loves it either.

Good design needs a point of view.

And a point of view means somebody will disagree with you.

I'm comfortable with that.

The Audience Comes Last — But the Wearer Matters

There's an important distinction here.

I'm not saying clients don't matter.

Of course they matter.

Particularly in bespoke jewellery.

Somebody is going to wear this object, potentially for the rest of their life.

Their opinion matters enormously.

But “the audience” and “the wearer” aren't necessarily the same thing.

I don't need everybody on Instagram to like your engagement ring.

I need you to love it.

And I need myself to believe in it.

That's enough.

Why Independent Designers Matter

Large jewellery companies have different responsibilities.

They have shareholders.

Staff.

Retail networks.

Sales targets.

Inventory.

Marketing departments.

They need products that appeal to large numbers of people.

I understand that.

One of the great advantages of remaining a small independent jewellery designer is that I don't have to think like that.

I can make something because I think it should exist.

Sometimes people love it.

Sometimes they don't.

Occasionally something I think is fantastic sits around for ages before somebody understands it.

That's fine.

I'm interested in the long game.

I'm Not Designing for This Season

Fine jewellery should last for decades.

Hopefully generations.

So I've never completely understood the obsession with jewellery trends.

If I'm designing an engagement ring you might still be wearing in 2056, why should I be overly concerned with what's trending on TikTok in 2026?

That's an absurdly short creative horizon.

I'd rather make something with identity.

Something connected to the person wearing it.

Something that still feels interesting long after the algorithm has moved on.

Market Research Is the Enemy of the Artist

So yes.

I'll say it.

Market research is the enemy of the artist.

Not the enemy of business.

Not the enemy of sales.

Not the enemy of understanding your clients.

But potentially the enemy of that strange, uncertain process where something genuinely new appears.

Because art requires a degree of selfishness.

You have to follow an idea before you know whether anybody else is interested.

You have to waste time.

You have to play.

You have to make mistakes.

You have to occasionally create something nobody asked for.

You have to go slightly out of your depth.

And you have to accept that the audience might not understand immediately.

Make What Needs to Be Made

After more than 30 years as a goldsmith and jewellery designer, I'm less interested than ever in predicting what people want me to make.

I'm interested in finding out what I need to make next.

That's why I still enjoy jewellery.

There's always another idea.

Another stone.

Another shape.

Another problem.

Another piece of architecture I haven't yet stolen an idea from.

Another way of taking something familiar apart and reconstructing it.

Deconstruct. Reconstruct.

Look backwards long enough to understand where you've come from.

Then turn around.

Play.

Experiment.

Go slightly too far.

Make something you're not completely sure about.

Because if you're only making what your audience already knows it wants, you're not really showing them anything new.

And for me, that's the entire point.

At Karl Karter, I create contemporary fine jewellery and bespoke engagement rings from my appointment-only Hatton Garden workshop in London.

My work is influenced by more than three decades of traditional goldsmithing, but I'm not particularly interested in reproducing the past.

I'm interested in what happens next.

The audience can decide whether they like it afterwards.

Why I Don't Follow Jewellery Trends: Market Research vs Creativity | Karl Karter

Market Research Is the Enemy of the Artist: A Jewellery Designer's Manifesto

Jewellery designer Karl Karter explains why he avoids designing by trend, market research or social media algorithms — and why creativity, play and craftsmanship create more original jewellery.

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