For my senior degree project, I created a platform that allows you to take stories from your family’s ancestry and turn them into a series of personalized storybooks. To demonstrate the platform’s final product I told the stories of three of my own ancestors: a witch, a Mayflower pilgrim, and a famous American artist.

 

Going into the semester I simply wanted to create a series of zines using stories from my family's ancestry as the content. I quickly realized that while this idea may interest me, it is not at all scaleable or useful to anyone outside of my family. 

While reevaluating why I was interested in the topic of my ancestry I discovered that the most exciting aspects are the stories that are told about the journeys and lives of specific ancestors, not just family trees full of birth and death dates. I also discovered that while ancestry.com (the most widely used genealogy database) does a great job at compiling data, it makes it very difficult to truly get to know your ancestors.

 

Throughout the semester I worked to create a method by which to tell these stories that was standardized enough to fit with anyone's family while still being beautiful, unique pieces of design. I originally envisioned providing a service that allows you to choose a certain aesthetic to go along with your story (elegant, edgy, vintage, etc.) but discovered that creating my own brand (Ancestory) made up of specifically chosen elements would allow for instant brand recognition no matter what story was being told.

 

This project has allowed me to further develop my love for print design while forcing me to constantly be aware of how important your audience is. I have learned that there is really no point in designing simply for the sake of design and the product that I created in the end is much more satisfying because it serves a purpose.