Description of my piece:

The work I have produced is a prototype of a bookmark. My prototype of the bookmark is the standard 2inches by 6inches, I have designed this in mind of the older demographic which may struggle with holding a bookmark, similarly this would also be suitable for younger children. The design of my bookmark was inspired by the quilt “York 1611” by Alicia Merrett. I really loved how this artist has used colour and shapes to convey an image of the map. I ultimately decided to choose the city centre part of her quilt and interpreted that section into my own pattern. To convey this in my bookmark I have used photoshop and vibrant colours to showcase this element as much as possible. I have in total used 5 colours for the building, I have sampled these from the original quilt, this way I could translate the quilt into my own design accurately. I also have used a variety of filters to convey the texture of the original quilt and make it look more interesting. I really wanted to showcase the clustered and interesting city life in this piece, and I think I succeeded in conveying this, especially with the cropped bookmark shape.

Reflection of my journey:

I have decided to do my piece based on the map of York, “York 1611”, by Alicia Merrett. I was really intrigued by this piece and subsequently I have decided to start off by creating various patterns based on different parts of the quilt. I really struggled at this part as I couldn’t create an interesting pattern while making the piece look like it belongs to the original quilt. I ended up choosing the city centre part of the quilt as I really liked the colour palette and various different shapes which were in it. I thought it would be really fun to design my own city map. At the beginning I kept making the buildings too small, which then made the roads look really wide and uneven, I didn’t really like this, but I ended up fixing it. I also created 3 colour swatches to help me decide which one would look better, one of them which I was originally going to pick was a but too dark compared to the original quilt, therefore I have decided to pick a lighter swatch and I think it really turned out well.