The Art & Science Of Eyewear

I am passionate about art and science.  I see the optical industry as this nice harmony between those two forces.  On one side you have the eyewear design aspect, which allows for free flowing creativity among artists.  As a designer you also have to understand the other side.  The other side is filled with opticians fitting lenses into your frames and then subsequently fitting your frames onto their client’s faces.  It is that second part that makes eyewear a very technical product.  It is one thing to make beautiful art, but it takes a very different set of skills to combine something beautiful with something as scientifically functional as a set of prescription lenses.  The designer and the optician each need to understand both the science and the art involved. My favorite collections epitomize this concept.  I can see it right away in a frame that has been designed with the optician’s work in mind.  These frames are a joy to work with because they are nice to look at on the face and they easily accommodate prescription lenses. When I see a frame made by a designer who understands this I know it right away.  I become inspired to find the right face and the right skin tone to highlight the frame.  The beautiful thing is that in working through this process the right frame brings out the best features in a face.  This is the approach we use at Hicks Brunson Eyewear when styling our clients. I love working with the Tom Davies collection because it offers me the freedom to redesign and customize frames. This is the freedom to work on the artistic side of the equation. I have made hundreds of bespoke frames for clients and created new designs of ready to wear frames that we stock. It has been through this design process that I have found a deep appreciation for the art and science of eyewear. (Featured image photograph by Derek Brunson)