Kevin Jack, the creator behind Jack Custom Jewelry on social media, is known for his mesmerizing time-lapse social media showcases. From snowflake ring designs to dragons that will wrap themselves around your finger, Kevin's designs in CAD are inspiring.
Mike spoke with Kevin to learn about how he got his start in custom jewelry design, his advice for others trying to learn CAD, and common pitfalls jewelry designers might encounter when designing jewelry to be worn.
Follow Jack Custom Jewelry online:
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKazCiRiA0JK1gGEeUtHC6w
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jackcustomjewelry/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jackcustomjewelry?_t=8l2VbB5f1Rf&_r=1
Send feedback or learn more about the podcast: punchmark.com/loupe
Learn about Punchmark's website platform: punchmark.com
Kevin Jack, the creator behind Jack Custom Jewelry on social media, is known for his mesmerizing time-lapse social media showcases. From snowflake ring designs to dragons that will wrap themselves around your finger, Kevin's designs in CAD are inspiring.
Mike spoke with Kevin to learn about how he got his start in custom jewelry design, his advice for others trying to learn CAD, and common pitfalls jewelry designers might encounter when designing jewelry to be worn.
Follow Jack Custom Jewelry online:
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKazCiRiA0JK1gGEeUtHC6w
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jackcustomjewelry/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jackcustomjewelry?_t=8l2VbB5f1Rf&_r=1
Send feedback or learn more about the podcast: punchmark.com/loupe
Learn about Punchmark's website platform: punchmark.com
Welcome back everybody to In the Loop. What is up everybody? My name is Michael Burpo. Thanks again for listening to In the Loop this week. I'm joined by Kevin Jack and he's with Jack Custom Jewelry and I found Kevin actually on the Young Jewelers Helping Young Jewelers Facebook group and he was posting these really awesome time-lapse and just process videos of his custom jewelry design in CAD and he also includes some of his work after the CAD model comes out and his like finishing process and I was so impressed by them.
Speaker 1:They were so interesting and he does a really good job of explaining it. I had left him a comment that was like you know, I absolutely love this, and we started talking a little bit more and I offered to have him on in the loop to talk a little bit more about what his goals are, how he got involved in custom jewelry design and also to see if he could shine a little bit of light on, like some of the barriers of custom jewelry design and how you can get started yourself. That's something you're interested in and he was remarkably forthcoming with a lot of details and I hope that if you're interested at all in custom jewelry design or getting involved with CAD design, that you can listen to this and have a better idea. Definitely go give him a follow on YouTube, tiktok and Instagram. I'll have all the notes in the show notes below, and I think it's really worth it, especially if you're in the jewelry industry. It's very cool. Cheers everybody, and enjoy.
Speaker 2:This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the jewelry industry's favorite website platform and digital growth agency. Our mission reaches way beyond technology. With decades of experience and long-lasting industry relationships, punchmark enables jewelry businesses to flourish in any marketplace. We consider our clients our friends, as many of them have been friends way before becoming clients. Punchmark's own success comes from the fact that we have a much deeper need and obligation to help our friends succeed. Whether you're looking for better e-commerce performance, business growth or campaigns that drive traffic and sales, punchmark's website and marketing services were made just for you. It's never too late to transform your business and stitch together your digital and physical worlds in a way that achieves tremendous growth and results.
Speaker 1:Schedule a guided demo today at punchmarkcom slash go. And now back to the show welcome everybody.
Speaker 3:I'm joined by kevin jack, a custom jewelry designer.
Speaker 1:How you doing today. Kevin, I'm great. How are you, michael? I'm doing very well, so excited to get a chance to speak with you. I'm actually a big fan of your time lapse videos that you started to post. I ran into you on Young Jewelers, helping Young Jewelers and it was like wow, someone's actually making the content that I'm really excited to see. It's been really cool to follow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you. It's an honor to be on one of my favorite podcasts.
Speaker 1:Very cool. I guess that's kind of where I want to start is how long have you been doing custom jewelry design? What got you into it? What's your background?
Speaker 3:Okay, so I actually have been in the jewelry, the custom jewelry space for about eight years. I married into the jewelry industry. My father in law is an independent diamond broker without a traditional brick and mortar store, and he used to have a showroom, but his prices and his inventory was pretty much the same as everybody else. So he got into the custom space mostly custom engagement rings and asked me for some help a few years after I got married to his daughter. So I was just helping him with sales and anything that he needed content creation, photography, videography and then, as my client base grew, I decided that I wanted to become a CAD designer myself.
Speaker 3:There were times when I'd be frustrated and I'd sell an engagement or I'd sell a center diamond, rather and you know, just waiting on a CAD designer or I would communicate everything to my father-in-law that I wanted him to know.
Speaker 3:That my client communicated to me and then he communicated to the CAD designer what they wanted, and so there were three degrees of separation and it very quickly became like a game of telephone. So I really had a. I had a desire to be a CAD designer so that I could be, you know, work one-on-one with my own clients, you're communicating directly with the designer and even some of the retail stores that I do CAD design for as well. That's still sometimes a problem. They'll communicate to the salesperson exactly what they want and that doesn't always get communicated to me. But no matter who you are, you can't read minds and maybe even when I was just in sales I wasn't the best at communicating exactly what my client wanted. But it's been amazing for my sales and also just a career that I really enjoy just being able to set my own hours and design on the computer, whether it's one-on-one for my own clients or for a retail store in the area.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess bringing on a designer, a CAD designer, in-house definitely is, I mean, such a fantastic power up for them because I'm sure that he gets either discounts or, you know, wholesale purchasing power for stones and it probably feeds into your ability to either be extra creative or expressive with your pieces, knowing that you have the ability to get these stones, you know, easier and maybe cheaper. I think that that sounds like a really natural kind of fit, and anytime a business can bring help or just creative talent in-house so that there, like you said, are less of those chances for telephone to distort the intended picture, is definitely going to be one of those really beneficial things for everybody involved, including the end customer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm really so grateful that he brought me into this business and you know I really love the jewelry industry, especially now that I'm doing my own designs and you know he's a really gifted salesman. He's also he has a lot of relationships with diamond cutters, and so we make a really good team. He focused on the diamond side, I focus on the design side, and we're both salesmen, so we make a really good team together and I'm super grateful to be in this career, because my first career was not something that I loved quite as much as this.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and a lot of your designs at least the three that you've posted videos about have been really. I hate using the term creative to describe something, but really like innovative, I guess, is the better word. You know you have one that's of a dragon wrapping around someone's hand or a snowflake. Is that typically what a lot of your work is, or are you kind of just showing the highlights like the most exciting, coolest ones? Lot of your work is, or are you kind of just showing the, the highlights like the most exciting, coolest ones?
Speaker 3:um, and you get like a lot of I don't know standard halos or double halos or something like that yeah, every once in a while I just get a, you know, a standard halo and they like the idea of something that's custom made, um, and they can't find exactly what they want in the store. But, for example, if you, if you sell a cushion cut diamond with a Halo, it almost has to be custom designed because if you get a cushion cut that's a 6.5 by a 5.4, you're probably not going to get that exact size from a manufacturer in a Halo. If it's a round Halo, then you can probably find exactly what you want without going ahead and doing the CAD design. But, yeah, I really enjoy, like the snowflake ring that you brought up, and my YouTube channel is pretty new, so I only have three videos right now, but I want to be posting a new video every week. But the snowflake ring was really fun because it is creative and it's a lot more challenging and unique than a standard halo design, for example.
Speaker 3:And the dragon ring. I am really proud of that, just because it did take so long to do, but it's very. You know, it's even some of my more unique designs. If you scour the internet long enough, you might say, oh well, that's pretty similar to that. That's pretty similar to that. It's hard to be completely original when there's so many amazing and talented designers out there and so many jewelry companies creating their own designs. But I really enjoy when somebody challenges me and gives me a more difficult task or a more innovative task to design, even if it takes longer.
Speaker 1:I totally agree. In the end let's be real A lot of the things that we're drawing inspiration from is in some way derivative. But I have a YouTuber that I really like and he uses the term yoink and twist, which is you know, yoink it, you're going to take it and then you're going to put your spin on it and there's. That is, the best way to kind of take inspiration is not just, you know, reproducing it, but taking inspiration and then going on to put your own creative spin and make it truly yours. So I don't think that there's anything wrong with being inspired or in some way derivative of what's out there, because I think that only in the truest form of mastery or just like the truest form of cluelessness can you be, like, truly unique. So I totally understand that.
Speaker 1:But I want to ask you about we have a ton of people, especially on Young Jewelers, helping Young Jewelers that are just getting into custom jewelry design, and it seems like CAD computer aided design is kind of the first step or like the main kind of hurdle that you're going to have to tackle. Can you talk about, first of all, how did you get and start learning how to use CAD, because it sounds like you came to a little bit later in your career, and were there any you know tools or instructionals that you consumed that you felt were really important?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's. I mean there's a lot of different ways that you can get started in CAD. Some of the people that I even do CAD designs for they send me really great mock-ups that they can just create on their computer. But to actually be a CAD designer, you know there are several avenues that you can go through. I recommend Rhino designing on Rhino, and GemVision, which is through Stuller, has a little bit spruced up jewelry design program called Matrix Gold and that runs through the Rhino engine. Basically Rhino is the engine, if you will, of that CAD designing software, but it has a lot of jewelry plugins like preset heads and just bringing in diamonds that you can place on surfaces, and so I did go through Gem Vision and bought the software for Matrix Gold.
Speaker 3:I know of some bench jewelers out there that I actually either know personally or I've done CAD design for and they might be a gamer and they already have a gaming computer, um, and you can actually get a 30-day free trial to rhino and you know, just try it out. There are a lot of instructionals on youtube. I went through the gem vision academy and I also paid for several courses on udemycom. There are several courses on udemycom that are really great by, like Rick Juad and Mohamed Mohsen are just really gifted CAD designers and show you a little bit more complex designs. Because this is sort of answering a question you asked earlier but when somebody comes to you with a custom design, it's not usually going to be a solitaire or a simple halo, and so you have to learn complicated things that weren't in your education it wasn't part of your apprenticeship, for example and you have to just kind of figure it out, and but once you do you'll, you will have learned it a lot better than if you even learned it in school.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I a 100% agree, and I went to school for design graphic design and one of the things I always laugh about is we always were focused on doing fundamental tasks, like you know, these basic.
Speaker 1:I would even consider warmups nowadays, where you would take, for example, you have an image and you have a set of copy of text and you need to figure out a nice composition that will display both and it's like okay, is this exactly what you're going to be doing in the future? It's like no, but the chances that you will have to be working with an object and a set of copy in a very confined amount of space and then having to make something that does actually read as important is kind of going to be the end goal. But is it going to be the exact same constraints? Usually not, but the fundamentals and the learning process that you learn through the first one will be applicable to the second one, and I think that that's the actual lesson in itself. At the time, when I was in design school, I did not understand that at all. I did not understand that the process of learning is actually what the lesson is as opposed to, I thought we were just learning how to design posters, which is actually not the case. I don't think.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, that makes sense. And there are so many things that you know come across my dashboard that it's like, especially at first, I didn't. You know, I'm looking at it, I'm like I have no idea how I'm going to build that, but I'm going to sit here until I figure it out and just put some podcasts or music on in the background, and I can be very resilient at times. My wife would say I can be very stubborn at times. Stubborn, okay, he's right, but I just I hate not being able to figure something out. And so you know all of the education and apprenticeships that I did go through, you know it teaches you the foundation and then you. But no matter what, if you're going to be a CAD designer, there's going to be a time where there's something that comes across your desk that you have to design and you didn't learn how to do it. So you have to just figure it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and one thing I'm always curious about when it comes to custom jewelry design. I have this real fear of the center stone or the important stone of a piece, a ring or other jewelry being lost. And I understand that you can get these things insured. I understand that For some reason it doesn't stick in my brain.
Speaker 1:My mom was, of course, you know, bequeathed a diamond early for my grandma. She's still around, but this ring has this incredible diamond in it, and what I find very interesting is that my mom is very, what I would call like, non-precious about it. She's like my mom works with her hands all the time and is very active and, as a result, that diamond is getting banged into things and she doesn't seem to have any fear when it comes to a custom jewelry design. Is there, like, first of all, any liability that a custom jewelry designer can face If, for example, say, you make this beautiful custom dragon engagement ring and the center stone is not adhered with the I don't know what the right term is tensile strength or the correct amount of joining force and that center stone gets lost one day, maybe six months later? Are you at all on the hook about that or is it just like sorry, man, you should have had like a more discerning eye when you pick the design kind of thing.
Speaker 3:Right. Yeah, I mean I guess I could be for my own clients At first. When I got started with CAD design, I didn't really. I took a very non-traditional approach, if you will, to becoming a CAD designer. I went from sales to CAD design. Most people go from becoming a bench jeweler to a CAD designer or both, and so I didn't.
Speaker 3:You know, one of my best friends, thankfully, is a master jeweler. He's, you know, he's too humble to call himself that, but he is. He's an amazing setter, amazing bench jeweler, amazing wax carver, amazing goldsmith, and I don't think I would have been able to do this without him. But there were a lot of designs that at first I would design it, render it, and it looked great in the render and then I'd send it to him and he would say he would say, dude, these prongs are way too small. And so you know and I was apprenticing with him on the bench at the time as well, just to kind of learn how stones are set, spacing, calibration of the gemstones In terms of a center stone. I mean, I don't know if, fortunately, that's never happened to me, but if it was one of my clients it would probably be maybe shared liability between me, the bench jeweler, and my father-in-law, because all of my sales go through his company, hogan Fine Jewelry, and all of the CAD designs go through my company, jack Custom Jewelry. But it was probably six months before I actually was creating my own pieces and those were going into production because my friend Matt that I mentioned, that's a master jeweler. He would have to and he was so patient with me. But he would say, okay, this isn't going to work because of this, this isn't going to cast, because of that, I'm not going to be able to polish this spot because of the way that you lofted that curve. And he's a CAD designer as well. We use different softwares, but just having that friendship has been invaluable to me because there were many designs that I pumped out at the beginning that were below production standards and he wasn't comfortable setting them because he, with decades of experience setting stones, he would say listen, this isn't, this just isn't going to work.
Speaker 3:Another point of interest sometimes people actually will look at my renders and say that looks great, but can we make the prongs smaller? And if it's one of my own clients, I'll usually say you know, no, that's where production standards are. And if they won't trust my judgment on that, then sometimes we do actually have them sign a release saying that they're knowingly asking us to set their gemstone below production standard value and that we assume no liability in the event of a loss. You know, just to protect my father-in-law and protect ourselves. You know, and another point of interest too is I know of several CAD designers that love CAD design because they don't actually have to handle the gemstones, because they're always so worried they're going to lose one. So fortunately that hasn't happened. Knock on wood, hopefully that won't happen to me ever again, ever period. If you follow production standards and you're working with jewelers with a lot of experience, then that really shouldn't happen.
Speaker 1:What a cool relationship that would be. And it seems very. How would you ever learn that without having someone that has experience to teach you that? I mean, you could probably read about it, but nothing will really drive something home with quite like someone explaining exactly why this doesn't work. I mean, I've had things like that with design, where it's like don't design anything for print that is below eight point type, because the eye doesn't read it and also most printers aren't able to print that small that you'll actually make the text legible. They'll start getting blurry. And those are the types of things that you actually do learn through process where it's like, hey, you know, you're going to just have to waste $50 on a bunch of prints one time because you set your type at six point, because it looked great on the computer, and then you go out and you print it and you can't read any of it. So it's definitely very important and I guess that's one of those things is.
Speaker 1:I'm very curious when it comes to custom jewelry and I'm kind of formulating this idea around. I want to do a almost like a documentary through in the loop on bench jewelers because the age of bench jewelers is steadily increasing. The average age of bench jewelers is steadily increasing and I'm worried this very important part of the industry is going to eventually be on the brink of being a lost trade or dying out. And one thing I'm curious about is the startup costs or, like the I don't want to say learning curve, but it's more like the material cost that goes into both custom jewelry design and also bench jewelry.
Speaker 1:It sounds like you had a bit of a hookup when it comes to working with materials through your father-in-law. Are there any tricks that someone that might not have those connections might be able to do when they're early on and they want to, just example, see their jewelry be brought to life and they don't have, you know, a thousand dollars to to put into scrap gold so that they can actually cast their, their rings in in gold? Can you like use I don't know, like you recommend everyone just use silver on everything? Or can you make stuff in I don't know, like aluminum, like what? Are those like uh, budget tricks that you you think you could use?
Speaker 3:so I know stuller does have an alloy that um is is very cost effective, um, and then they also have. They also have a brass alloy. That is only like I want to say it's like 25 a pound, oh, okay, cool that um. Unfortunately you have to have a special melter because brass casts at a higher temperature than gold. But if you're looking to like learn how to cast and you want to learn how to set stones, I would probably recommend you know casting brass or getting the sort of brass alloy from you know, from Stuller or from some other manufacturer that will tell you the temperature it needs to be on. That's even more cost effective than silver. We don't sell we personally don't sell any moissanite jewelry, but that could be another great thing because, just because it has a hardness higher than cubics, for example, you could get a lot of moissanite and create your own pieces and practice setting with that.
Speaker 3:I've had a lot of people ask me how do you get into the jewelry industry? And I always recommend apprenticing with a jeweler, because there are so many jewelers out there that just need help polishing. I mean, if you can just get in there and learn how to polish and then, okay, this week we're going to learn how to resize rings and this week we're going to learn how to solder. This week we're going to learn how to set stones.
Speaker 3:And if you can just get in there as an apprentice after years and years, you could get hired by a jewelry store. You can have your own um, you know. You could have your own wholesale company really, and do even better than that Um. Unfortunately, you know, startup costs can be really expensive. If you want a microscope, if you want to buy a bench, you need to buy you know 30 different pairs of pliers. If you want to buy a laser welder, you know. But if you apprentice and you just buy those things over time while you're learning, I think that's a really good outlet that people who are looking to become bench jewelers could, you know, could express.
Speaker 1:As a part of those things. I understand and I appreciate the fact that now everybody is approaching a either changing career or the entry point of their career with a lot of funds to be able to kind of bootstrap, especially something. In the end we are making luxury goods and with luxury goods it just comes with an expensive startup cost and I'm always trying to find ways to make it so that the cost of entry is a little bit lower, because otherwise, if it's cost prohibitive I mean in the end it is prohibitive. So it's good to hear that there are kind of alternatives that aren't just using. I always was saying like I should just use like pieces of, like polished glass or something like that as like the center. But Moissanite does sound like a better solution because it probably chips a little bit less. But, kevin, I think, if it's all right with you, we're going to take a quick break. We're going to come back from an ad and then I want to talk to you about the content that you've been making and where you hope to go with it. So stay with us everybody. We'll be back in just one minute. Good news everybody.
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Speaker 1:And now back to the show. All right, everybody still back with Kevin, jack, custom jewelry designer, and Kevin, I want to talk to you about this YouTube content that you've been making. So I, very selfishly, am trying to push you towards making vertical videos because I think that the algorithms are all starting to shift that way. I think that every other social media platform has seen the effect that TikTok has had on the kind of the social media landscape and, as a result, everybody is trying to compete with it because they know that tick tock is eating their lunch and, as a result, uh, the algorithms are starting to reward other creators that are making uh, these, you know similar content and the ones that I've made, uh, in the loop episodes about it in the past.
Speaker 1:But to give everybody an idea, if you're just tuning in for the first time, these vertical video platforms are are TikTok and their videos are just called TikToks. There's YouTube Shorts, which are vertical videos that are typically shorter. I think that they have to be under, I believe, one minute and 30 seconds. And then there are Instagram Reels, which actually have a longer length. I think that they can be up to six minutes and they also just encompass vertical videos. In general, that aren't the snappy kind of content-y sort of things that we associate with TikToks. But Instagram Reels also appear natively alongside other photos, which I sometimes feel is very beneficial for a lot of things like which I sometimes feel is very beneficial for a lot of things like, for example, just creatives outlet to show process, and I kind of wanted to talk what gave you the spark to start creating these time lapse videos of your process?
Speaker 3:So originally I started it just because I wanted to have recordings of myself modeling, so I could kind of go back and see how I did certain models when I started and then as I improved, and then several people actually asked me you know, hey, can you like record? Can you record you designing the piece? Can you record casting the piece, setting the piece? And I try to do that for people who ask me. I don't actually work in in my bench jewelers workshop about one day a week, um, and so if he's, if he's setting that, setting it that day, sometimes I'll ask him, hey, don't, don't set that until Friday, cause that's the day I spent spend with him, um, so I can record that for them, cause they like to share it with their loved ones. But I was just thinking I have all of this content and a lot of the designs that I do I can't share because it is for a retailer, but if it's one of my own clients, I just said you know I have all of this content, you know I can speed up these videos and thankful to you that you gave me some advice as well. You know, add some text in there to show what you're doing. That's what you said on Young Jewelers, Helping Jewelers, and any piece of advice you can give me I'm grateful for. So, but I, you know, I'd love to make more content like that and I tried a couple of vertical videos.
Speaker 3:I have started videoing my finished pieces vertically and horizontally, even though it takes twice as long, um, because that's the algorithm, right, that's what you know, that's what people want to push.
Speaker 3:And my wife just started a TikTok account for me, um, so that we can do it on there as well and, um, you know, maybe build some, build some brand awareness there as well, um, unfortunately my computer screen is horizontal, Um, so I may even, uh, I may even have to just go back to a design and sort of reverse engineer it, if you will, even if it's not like the screen record that I am recording as I'm modeling a video, if I can just I was thinking, I'm just kind of brainstorming about it because, again, any, any piece of advice you can give me, I'm I'm very grateful for. But if I just if I keep the model in the middle of the computer, um, and I just kind of reverse engineer it and and hide different layers and then sort of just rebuild the piece, even if it's not my actual CAD design, as I'm um completing my workflow, um, maybe if I keep it in the center of the computer enough that I can create a vertical version of that video, and if it's not a bad idea.
Speaker 1:The other option I would probably even recommend is I've seen content creators do this in the past is they go and they buy a, you know, one of those movable secondary screens. So you know you have your main desk working desktop and you're going to have, like, have a secondary window or a secondary screen. I am on a two screen setup. What you can do is you can buy these ones where you can. Actually, they have an extendable neck that is going to hoist the screen, and then what you can do is you can actually change the orientation and make it so that the secondary screen is now vertically shaped, and it takes a little bit of finessing with your PC and making sure that things are actually understanding that it is a vertical crop, but then, as a result, your natural working environment is now vertical and it'll make it so that things become much easier Once you do a screen record. You are recording in vertical crop and I totally feel you about.
Speaker 1:Like the pain of having to work on a horizontal or landscape desktop and then turning it into into content is absolutely painful. But I don't know. I have been in this industry for, at this point, approaching seven years and what I've learned is that the industry is very far behind when it comes to technology adoption and so things are a little bit behind. And I'm just kind of like you know what? I love watching, for example, people taking apart watches and cleaning them or refurbishing them, and like it's always on Rolexes. But I'm just a Rolex fanboy and like.
Speaker 1:I love seeing people breaking them apart, cleaning the different things and like the bubble jet, and I love that's where I got the idea for like a little descriptive text that kind of explains it to me, because I don't know what they're doing when they when they put the little screws in the in the tea strainer looking thing and they put it in there and suddenly they come out perfect and they're like oh, it's an alkaline solution. That's the kind of stuff that I find so interesting. As someone who is on the peripheral of this industry and seeing someone finally bringing in a custom jewelry design, I was just doing a little bit of looking around when we were preparing for this episode and I'm just kind of shocked at how little there is out there, Whereas I mean, everybody seemingly everybody wears jewelry and I'm sure that some people, especially creative people, would love to know how this jewelry is made, especially custom jewelry like the stuff you're making. So I think it's a perfect fit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what I'm hoping for. I mean, if it can, you know, drive business popularity. If it can, you know, I would love to make a name for myself as a custom jewelry designer and, you know, hopefully eventually have enough viewership where people understand what CAD design is and not just people that are looking to go the alternate route rather than buying a mass produced piece, but also for people who are CAD designers as well. If you look at some of my videos, after your recommendation to add some texts to the videos, with what I'm adding, some of the text is very clearly geared towards potential clients and people who might be interested in custom jewelry design. Um, and then some of the text is I use vocabulary that only a CAD designer would, would know Um, like, okay, no, I'm, I'm sweeping the ring rail and you know, a layman wouldn't know what I mean by that. But if I said, you know, I guess I could say building the ring rail. But you know this is still pretty new to me, but I'm trying to. I would love to have something in there for everybody. You know, the layman who's just interested in custom jewelry design and hopefully interested with working with us in the future, or somebody else who does CAD design that can get them their dream piece of jewelry and also something in there.
Speaker 3:For people who are learning how to become CAD designers, there's a really great group on Facebook called Matrix Gold Support Community or Matrix Gold and Rhino. I just type in Matrix and it auto-populates. But there's a lot of people in there that are beginners and they're like how do I do this, how do we do that? And I just remember being a beginner and it was just so overwhelming.
Speaker 3:A lot of people, they, they make the, they make the investment and you know, buying the processing computer or gaming computer and they buy the software and it's it just is too hard and they, they don't follow through with it. But if you, if you stick with with it, you can, you can get it. And hopefully, my, hopefully my YouTube content will be helpful for people that want to learn design, whether it's a bench jeweler or somebody that's in the jewelry industry and wants to become a CAD designer like I did. I haven't. I don't know many people who who took the same route that I did, but you know, the more people that I can help and grow brand awareness and hopefully make a name for myself as a designer, the better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just to circle back to what you were talking about, especially using that term, you know, sweeping the. What was it Sweeping the rail? What was it Sweeping the ring rail? Yeah, the ring rail.
Speaker 1:To me, honestly, just as a viewer and again I don't have any experience with custom jewelry design I will say that that doesn't turn me off at all to your content. I kind of like knowing that there is levels to this thing and when it comes to, for example, my experience is watercolor design and watercolor painting and I've made content around that. One thing I've found very interesting is that sometimes I would delve into things like color theory. I have, like I was mentioning before, I have a very pragmatic approach to design and it sounds like you have a similar kind of view where it's not like this. For me at least, and for some people it is. For me it's not very like spiritual and it's not very like wow, like I'm really putting my essence into this thing. To me, I am just expressing myself and finding a way, in a similar way that singing or dance or, you know, like conversation can do. And when I would dive into some of those kind of more nuanced approaches, people were like that went way over my head, but I liked that you were so excited by it and that's kind of one of those things, Like you were saying it's are you going to directly make a sale from, let's just say, a TikTok account or your YouTube account?
Speaker 1:And it's like, in the short term, the odds are probably not likely. In the very short term, maybe you build this thing up and in two years, you have a couple thousand followers or subscribers on YouTube. Yes, that could lead to this, but I do think that it's just another kind of line in the water that is going to potentially have a fish bite it, and I think that, or you can use it as, for example, an asset. That's what I found with mine is. It was so valuable for me to be able to show people what the process is like, and it always made it so that no one ever questioned my rates and I would say, like, oh, like, hey, here's a video of me painting.
Speaker 1:You know your process. And no one ever, like, blinked an eye when I said, oh, and it's, it costs this much for your painting. Because people knew and they saw that I had six hours of painting condensed into into three minutes. They were much more. It was much more palatable when they saw that there was kind of a lot of work that went into it. So you know, what is the utility of social media nowadays? I don't really know, but I think it's all of the above at this point.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think, unfortunately, there are people custom design isn't for everybody because there are people that are, that are willing to pay good money for original artwork, you know. And there are people that are willing to pay good money for original artwork, you know. And there are people who are willing to pay a little bit more for a custom design ring that's, you know, set by a master jeweler and isn't just a mass manufactured piece. And unfortunately, there will always be people who don't, um, who don't recognize great artwork and the time that it takes to create great artwork, and not just the time that it takes. You know, you mentioned a six a six hour piece, condensed to three minutes.
Speaker 3:But how many hours did you spend, you know, becoming a great artist in, you know, whether it was in school or even even as a kid, spending sketching. I mean those, those hours. It's what 10,000 hours creates mastery. You know, if you add up all the hours between school and the investment that you put into that and the hours that you've put in to becoming a great watercolor artist, or the hours that somebody puts into becoming a great CAD designer or a great bench jeweler, it's not just okay, this CAD design took me three hours. You know, it's the time that you spend to learn how to create beautiful artwork, whether it's watercolor or jewelry.
Speaker 1:That's again circling back to this like pragmatic approach. I always laugh that I came from a sports background, I grew up with sports, I still enjoy doing sports and I have this expressive thing of where I think that athleticism and artisticness are very, very, very similar and in that you can be athletic, but if you don't put the work in, then who cares? But at the same time, I think that you still need, if you're athletic, even if you're athletic, you still need to go out there. And if you want to be good at basketball, you need to go out there and hit your your free throws or hit your jumpers, and a lot of times that's when no one's looking and you need to go out there and get the time. I always say you got to get the reps in and for when it comes to art, a lot of times like my mom will be like hey, what'd you do today? And be like, oh, you know, I, uh, I drew my hands for an for three hours and it's like, but you're not going to sell that and it's like it doesn't matter, it's about getting the reps in.
Speaker 1:And I think, with with yourself even that you mentioned that you started out wanting to record your process so you could actually go back and look at it. That's actually one of those things that, like you, could even apply that to being an athlete. It's that, like watching film studies is actually an incredible way to do that. And why is that so? Why could that be different than you know doing art, watching your own process and noticing that you for myself, I noticed that I was stopping all the time. I would paint for one minute and then I would stop for a minute, and it's like no, if you watch any master, they sit there and they bang out 10 minutes at a time and then they take a break, and I didn't realize that that is very important. I wouldn't have found that if I didn't watch a little bit of film or start to kind of delve deeper into that. So mad props to you for that.
Speaker 3:Thank you. Yeah, athletics is a is a has been a big part of my life as well. I'm actually sort of on the tail end of my professional water ski career and I but I, I still coach and I have videos of me over decades skiing and I I have this app called Coach's Eye and it's really cool because I'll put a video of me next to a video of one of my students and I can show them like okay, look at my right shoulder compared to your right shoulder, what do you notice? And they're like yeah, your right shoulder's way higher than my right shoulder is Okay, so that explains why you're landing this flip in that way. That's what we need to go out there and fix. And I um, I, I didn't. I grew up in Maine and all of my competition was in Florida skiing year round, so I had to, I had to use video and analysis like that just to, just to be able to keep up with the tail end of the Floridians.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, that's a really, really interesting comparison. And you're right, I still think I've had these milestone markers in my career in a lot of different ways, and one of them was I just found a video of a. It was a manga artist, this master illustrator, and it was like an unsped up version of what he does and it was just like he spent so many hours on every single page and I realized I was like, wow, I am not spending enough time on these things, and having that kind of that perspective in the always a student kind of mindset, is definitely so key and so important. I'm glad that you have that too, especially, I mean, you're already so far with your custom jewelry design, having only come into it later on in your career. That's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1:So now, kevin, I kind of want to talk one more second about just these communities online, because we're going to have a lot of listeners that are entering or they saw custom jewelry design and they are interested in hearing your story. I know that the community is important to kind of surround yourself with individuals that are interested in the same thing as you. Can you call out a couple of the ones that you most are finding useful information from, and then we can kind of wrap it up from there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I definitely think you know. If you wanted to become a cad designer, um, you know, there there are a lot of two-dimensional things that you can start with in terms of design and I recommend that you do that. I I used to do like clip art and graphic design. Uh, that definitely helped me with 3D design. But I would say, if you're looking to get started, definitely get a gaming computer and either download Rhino and you can go to udemycom and learn how to design jewelry just in Rhino, or, if you want to go all the way and get Matrix Gold produced by Gemvision. There's also some new jewelry designs coming out, like Jewel Beetle, and there are other more cost-effective ways to learn CAD design. You can use a 3D modeling software called Grasshopper, which is a lot more cost-effective than purchasing the Rhino software. I will say most of the industry specialists are working in Rhino or Matrix Gold, which uses Rhino for its command module.
Speaker 3:But if you already have a gaming computer, you're already a jeweler, or you have a high-processing computer and you're looking to get involved in CAD design, then I would say, just looking for good videos on YouTube from myself or from other designers. There's one designer that I've learned a lot from named Marty Howell. She has a channel called Anatomy of a CAD Designer. That's really just for CAD designers to learn from. It's all free. It's on YouTube, even some of the paid courses, though, on udemycom by Rick Juad or Mohamed Mohsen. You can learn so much from that If you do go ahead and buy. Matrix Gold. Gem Vision Academy has a plethora of resources that you can learn from, and they even have support that you can call in and get some questions answered for.
Speaker 1:Wow, how cool is that. You know it's Suite with Photoshop and Illustrator and XD and all the different ones. Or you're learning CAD or you're just learning new platforms like the editing tools on platforms. It can be very intimidating in the beginning and it's a very unnatural feeling, but as you use them more, I promise the natural feel in using it as an extension of your body comes with practice and I hope that people give anything any opportunity of using a new tool. They at least try it twice. The first time it's going to be very prohibitive and very difficult and the second time, I'm hoping will be easier and if you can do that, it builds, starts to build a habit and then you can decide if that's the one for you. But, kevin, where can people find more information about you, your excellent YouTube series and everything else?
Speaker 3:So my company is Jack Custom Jewelry, so my Instagram is Jack Custom Jewelry and my YouTube channel is Jack Custom Jewelry. Like I said, all my sales go through my father-in-law's company, hogan find jewelry. But if you want to follow along and learn more about CAD design or just see my workflow, you can go to my YouTube channel and I guess it's youtubecom slash Jack custom jewelry, or just type that in the search bar, or go to my Instagram. I post them there as well. They're just sometimes shorter versions than the YouTube version and you know, I hope that that helps you. I hope that that allows you to see. You know how CAD design is created, how much work goes into it, and if you want to become a CAD designer as well, it you know, we'll give you a tip or a starting point on how to do more complicated designs.
Speaker 1:Man. I love it. I'll have all that information in the show notes, your Instagram, your YouTube, and I think that it'll be a really cool starting point, for I'm going to share this episode in a variety of the different Facebook groups so that people can, if they're interested or have a passing interest or have someone that they think might be interested in it, they can share with them and start to get you know, learning a little bit more about custom jewelry design, if that's something that they should pursue. Kevin, I really appreciate your time. This has been super interesting. I really enjoy following your work. It's a field that I don't have any expertise in. As a result, I feel like I kind of just enjoyed like the craftsmanship in the process of it, so it's been really cool to get a chance to speak with you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been an honor to talk to you, michael, and I'm looking forward to hearing more of your content. I learn a lot from you every week.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, kevin, everybody. We'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers Bye. All right, everybody. That's the end of the show. Thanks so much for listening. This week's episode was brought to you by Punchmark and produced and hosted by me, michael Burpo. My guest this week was Kevin Jack with Jack Custom Jewelry, and definitely give him a follow on YouTube, tiktok and Instagram. All of his links will be in the show notes below. I really think it's worth it. It's very cool videos. This episode was edited by Paul Suarez with music by Ross Cockrum. Don't forget to rate the podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us feedback on punchmarkcom slash loop. That's L-O-U-P-E. Thanks, and we'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers Bye, thank you.