The following publication is one that hits home for me and is one that I adored being a part of. The Zeitgeist Project (meaning "spirit & time") is an international project that started in Berlin with a group of senior citizens and a project manager that ran sessions getting to know each and every senior. At the end of the project a big publication was put together as a memento piece that would live on forever with the seniors. The seniors that were gathered were primarily ones who lived in a care facility and/or had signs of dementia/Alzheimer's.
Similarly, at Emily Carr University we have a Health Design Lab, who creates around health and wellness. This project was done in collaboration with that group and some master student researchers. As a class we were introduced to the Haro Park Center senior citizens, right here in Vancouver, BC. (Most of these seniors also showed signs of dementia/Alzheimer's.) We got into groups of 3-5 students and were paired up with 3-5 seniors at the care home. My group (of girls) had a group of three wonderful ladies!
From the stories that were told during our 1 hour sessions with the seniors, the pages of this publication came to life. Included are snippets of childhoods, current hobbies, and even a story about Queen Elizabeth! The process started as sketches and copyright, perfecting illustrations in photoshop, formatting the "chapters" for each resident, giving the publication an identity through layout and typface(s), the color schemes and then the finishing touches of paper and binding.
All the printing was done using a Riso Printer. Each color needed to be its own master page in black and white, those pages needed to be re-printed for the secondary color to overlay, and again if there were 3 or 4 colors on the same page. Printing 40 copies of this publication took 2 days; having a plan, printing, ordering, and drying everything is critical for something like this to work.
This is a publication that took a whole semester to put together: about 7/ 1 hour sessions, lots of patience, storytelling, laughs, tears (of happiness), many many hours of Photoshop, and of course a beautifully crafted memory for us and our seniors to share!
