Stand-out Pieces:
How CVC Stones and AK Studio’s collaged mood board and product imagery re-imagines product storytelling on Instagram.
At left, Zodiac pendant by CVC Stones superimposed atop a starry night sky; at right, Sunup necklace by AK Studio photographed atop an editorial from Bon Magazine.
Although visual platforms like Instagram give designers a chance to share more about their work and vision, they also pose a challenge vis-a-vis authoring quality visual stories on a regular basis. While profiles typically include found inspirational imagery among look-book product photography, two jewelry brands — CVC Stones and AK Studio — both go a step further, creating serial product imagery made by superimposing their jewelry designs either digitally or physically atop inspirational reference images.
Consistent and easily reproducible, but always different, the concepts behind their collaged and serial approach offer a simple way to share regularly and meaningfully about the qualities and story-lines important to their work.
The following case-studies introduce each designer’s visual strategy.
CVC Stones
What began as a search for ways to artistically preserve a single loose diamond gifted to Charlie de Viel Castel from his late French grandmother, became CVC Stones — a new line of necklace pendants of diamonds set in found stones.
De Viel Castel’s founding inspiration — “to think beyond traditional diamond settings” — is playfully reinterpreted in an ongoing series of images on the brand’s Instagram where static frontal photographs of stone pendants are removed from their off-white product backgrounds and superimposed atop complementary images of landscapes or artworks. In the same way that each pendant is unique, each background image feels uniquely matched to its pendant. The resulting pairings tell a kind of origin story.
A product photograph of the Eerie stone by CVC stones superimposed on an Icelandic mountain-scape.
While the landscape imagery points in particular to where a given stone was found, or could have been found, all background images in the series touch on why a pendant’s color, texture, pattern, shape and even its diamond composition might captivate us.
L’Amour Island pendant by CVC Stones in Iceland.
As seen in “L’Amour Island in Iceland”, four smaller diamonds orbit a large diamond to one side mirroring how the waves gently flow around the large beach shore rock.
In addition to their artistry, these images also allow for a thoughtful use of Instagram, where tagging referenced places and artists create opportunities to connect with new audiences.
AK Studio
instagram.com/_akstudio_ #aks_tearsheets
Whereas CVC Stones takes advantage of digital collage to produce surreal pairings, AK Studio’s hand sculpted pieces designed by Anna Korte take on a more hands-on approach. Korte regularly photographs her designs by physically placing them atop magazine tear-sheets.
The physical act of arranging the jewelry atop a background image gives the designer a chance to play with the jewelry’s form. The contrast of physical object atop a flat photograph also often gives the object an added illusion of depth and texture, resembling how foreground elements pop in stereoscopic photography.
The tear-sheet series generally tells two types of stories: Korte either models her pieces atop photographs of models — a playful equivalent to holding up a garment to one’s body — or, she arranges pieces more abstractly atop photographs of people, places and, most recently, atop original ink paintings.
Whether modeled or abstracted, the pairing of jewelry and background imagery always considers a piece of jewelry’s interest as an art object. For modeled images this means an earring might share the same shape as the wearer’s eyes, a thin chain and delicate pendant match a model's wisps of hair and a pendant echoes a top’s cut-out design.
Meanwhile, abstract compositions play further into an object’s metaphor: incomplete hoops feel like curtain ties, a piece titled “threshold band” echoes a model’s stance at the edge of the pool and the “union” necklace traces over the circular shape of the model’s linked arms.
Just like CVC stones, the tear-sheet imagery becomes an informal way to connect with like-minded audiences by tagging profiles and hashtags belonging to referenced magazines and by giving credit to editors, photographers, stylists and models.