Everyday documents we write for ourselves are personal witnesses to our lives. Created for practical use, calendars, notes, lists, recipes and thoughts hold the potential to become records of the everyday, painting a portrait of who we are through the lives we live. Yet their ability to document lived experience and hold memories is often overlooked, particularly as everyday life-writing moves into digital spaces.
(DIS)CONNECTED PORTRAITS explores how communication design can use printed publication to observe everyday life-writings as portraits of the self. Informed by an autoethnographic approach, the project draws on personal experience, research, conversations, observation, collection and iterative making. The central publication brings together life-writings collected from 21 people significant to different chapters of my life, using their life writings to construct individual portraits.
Alongside social media, an interactive analogue collection calendar invites readers to collect their own life-writings, encouraging a personal perspective on how everyday documents can become portraits of the self.
