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Design Lab started as an experiment. I wanted more room to play with ideas, test combinations and make things without knowing from the beginning exactly where they would end up. Some designs might stick around. Others might exist for a short time and lead me somewhere completely different.
When I originally introduced Design Lab in 2021, I had been prioritizing more time for creativity and design in the studio. My team and I were experimenting with different shapes, methods, materials and combinations, and I wanted a way to share some of that process before every idea had been polished into a permanent collection.
The name Design Lab actually goes all the way back to my time studying Industrial Design at Virginia Tech. My primary design class was called Lab, and it was where we deliberately designed, tested and questioned our ideas.
The process moved from conceptualizing to sketching, modeling, refining and critiquing, followed by more refining. Then we'd do it all over again. It was iteration after iteration, and that process taught me that good design doesn't usually arrive fully formed. You have to give an idea enough room to change.
That way of working became deeply ingrained in the way I approach jewelry. Even now, I'll sketch something, make it, change the proportions, rethink a detail, wear it around, take it apart and start again. Sometimes the smallest adjustment is the thing that finally makes a design click.
Design Lab gave me a place to bring that process out into the open. Instead of waiting until an entire collection was completely resolved, I could create small groups of pieces around an idea I had been exploring and let them exist as experiments of their own.
It also gave me something I really value as a designer: freedom. Not every idea has to become part of a permanent collection. Some designs teach us something and lead to the next idea. Others evolve over time until they become something we never could have predicted when we started.
CMD looks different today than it did when I introduced Design Lab in 2021, but that experimental way of working never went away. There are always sketches on my desk, half-formed ideas at the bench and conversations happening between me and my team about how we can make something work differently or better.
That same process is also a huge part of the Custom and Reconstruction work I do now. We start somewhere, experiment with possibilities and refine until the proportions, materials and details feel right. The finished jewelry may look effortless, but there are usually a whole lot of decisions hiding behind it.
Design Lab may have been the name I gave the experiment in 2021, but the idea behind it has been part of the way I design for much longer.
Still experimenting,
Colleen
© Colleen Mauer Designs. All rights reserved.
Published: July 2, 2021
Updated: August 20, 2026
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I love seeing CMD jewelry out in the wild. When I first started making jewelry back in my tiny Hayes Valley apartment in San Francisco, I wasn't interested in creating pieces that only came out for special occasions. I wanted to make jewelry that became part of people's everyday lives. The kind of ring you absentmindedly twist while you're thinking or having [...]
One of the questions I get most often during Reconstruction consultations is: “Will my exact gold be melted down and turned directly into my new piece?” It’s a completely understandable question, especially because reconstruction work is so personal. People are often bringing in wedding rings, inherited [...]
There is something worth noticing about the world we live in now. We expect almost everything to happen immediately. We can order dinner with a few taps on our phones, have groceries delivered to our front door and buy just about anything online without ever leaving the couch. Convenience has become [...]
Betty hess
August 31, 2021
Interested in the Design Lab.