Every Colour in a Cell

Every Colour in a Cell

Produce ONE image, square: a cloisonné enamel souvenir badge on a white ground. Follow every line. Replace only the FIELDS block; everything after it is fixed.

First — do you have the fields?

If any field below still has braces around it, stop and ask. Put all the questions in one short message, and show the example under each one so they can see the shape of a useful answer. Wait for the replies, then draw. Never fill a brace yourself: a value you invented is a value nobody asked for, and it will look exactly as considered as the ones they did give you.

Ask in whatever language they are writing to you in. Translate the questions and the examples; do not make someone read English to tell you what they want.

The examples are only examples. If someone answers a question, use their answer; never fall back to the example because you prefer it.

If the fields are already filled in, ignore this and carry on.

Fields — replace these six lines only

• What it commemorates: {the place, season or occasion} e.g. Vibary's first build week, as a collectable pin
• The centre: {one subject, described as flat shapes} e.g. a broad arched workshop window of nine lit panes, seen straight on
• The ring around it: {two or three secondary elements} e.g. a stack of pattern cards to the left, a coiled cable to the right, a crescent moon above
• The border band: {one repeating motif for the edge} e.g. a repeating row of small squares, like a line of pixels, along the lower edge
• The shape: {the badge's outline} e.g. a rounded hexagon
• The palette: {three or four enamel colours, and the metal} e.g. indigo, sage, bone and one amber, in champagne gold wire

The cell law

This is not a style rule. It is how the object is made, and it is the only thing that separates a badge from a picture with gold lines drawn on it.

In cloisonné the wires are dams. Molten glass is poured into the compartments they make, and it stays where the walls hold it. So:

• Every colour sits in a cell closed on all sides. Trace the edge of any colour and you return to where you began without ever passing into another colour except across gold.
• No wire dead-ends. Every line runs from another wire, or to the rim. A gold line stopping in the middle of a colour field is a wall with nothing to hold back.
• The rule applies to the middle of the badge, not just the border. This is where the style fails and it fails the same way every time: the frame, the waves and the corner motifs come back as proper cloisonné, and then the picture inside them is airbrushed — mountains blending into one another, water as one continuous gradient, foliage shaded photographically, no wire anywhere. Half an object and half a painting.

Flat inside the cell

Enamel does not shade. Each cell is one flat colour, glossy, even across its whole area.

Depth is built by stacking flat cells, which is exactly what real enamel does:

• Three ridges of hills are three flat tones with two wires between them, not one airbrushed mass.
• Water is four or five flat bands, lightest nearest the horizon.
• A lit window is not a glow; it is a pale cell inside a darker one.

No gradients, no soft shadows, no blur, no painted texture anywhere inside a cell.

The minimum cell

No cell smaller than a grain of rice at the badge's real size.

A tree drawn as a thousand separate leaves cannot be filled with molten glass, and that is what makes these designs collapse into mush. Draw the tree as three or four flat masses. Draw the crowd as two figures. This constraint is what gives real badges their stylisation, so use it rather than fighting it.

Composition

Three tiers, and each must be plainly a different size:

1. 1The centre — one subject, the largest thing on the badge, placed in the middle and reading first.
2. 2The ring — two or three secondary elements arranged around it, each clearly smaller, each in its own outlined cells.
3. 3The border — one repeating motif following the rim: waves, squares, chevrons, leaves, arcs. It must repeat cleanly and meet itself without a broken unit.

Metal and material

• Raised champagne gold wire throughout: real thickness, rounded edges, a soft highlight along the top of each line. Never thin brassy yellow, never flat printed lines.
• The outer rim is the heaviest gold on the badge, unbroken all the way round.
• Enamel reads as glass: glossy, saturated, slightly deep. One broad, very soft highlight may sweep across the whole face; no per-cell reflections.

The frame

Pure white background, badge centred, generous margin. One very faint contact shadow to show its thickness. Nothing else in frame — no scene, no props, no second badge, no caption bar.

Never

• ✕ any colour not fully enclosed by gold
• ✕ a gradient, blur or painted shading inside a cell
• ✕ a wire that stops in the middle of a colour
• ✕ cells too small to pour — leaves, feathers, crowds, brickwork
• ✕ text of any kind: names, dates, captions, watermarks
• ✕ a real company, event or institution's logo or emblem
• ✕ a grey, cream, textured or scenic background

The result

A badge somebody would actually buy: gold you could feel with a thumbnail, colour that stops where the metal tells it to, and a picture built from flat pieces because that is the only way this object has ever been made.