Bookmark Design

The book I was assigned to create a bookmark for was The Alchemist, which is a 1988 novel by Paul Coelho. The synopsis I wrote about the book is: The Alchemist follows the journey of an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago. Santiago starts believing a recurring dream to become a prophetic and decides to travel to a gypsy in a close town to discover its significance. She informs him that there’s treasure in the Pyramids in Egypt. Early into his journey, he meets an old king, Melchizedek, who tells him to sell his sheep to travel to Egypt, and his Personal Legend: something which he always wanted to achieve in life. And that "When you want something, the entire universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." This is the core philosophy and meaning of the book. Throughout his journey he encounters multiple emotions; danger, love, disaster, opportunity, and learns a lot about himself and the world. During his travels, he meets a beautiful Arabian woman called Fatima who explains to him that if he follows his heart, he shall find what it is he seeks. Santiago then encounters a lone alchemist who tells about personal legends. He says that people only want to find the treasure of their personal legends but not the personal legend itself. He feels unsure about himself as he listens to the alchemist's teachings. The alchemist states "Those who don't understand their personal legends will fail to comprehend its teachings." It also states that treasure is more worthy than gold.   

I created my bookmark on Indesign as I felt it was the best software system to create something as creative as a bookmark.

To start my bookmark I found an image off google which I felt related to my book; The Alchemist. I googled multiple different things which related to the novel including gold, pyramids, eyes, the desert; all things which play a large element in the book. Finally I found an image which I felt incorporated all of those elements. The image I found was very detailed which I liked; it had plently elements which related to The Alchemist, including a sun, an eye and a pyramid. I really like the image I found as its all over The Alchemist incorporated into one.













The actual editing I did on this bookmark consisted of changing parts of the book marks colour, adding black into section, changing the size of the image, transforming parts of the original image to create something which looks completely different.

These screengrabs show we editing the book mark on Indesign:

This is the final outcome of my bookmark: