The lost memories of Jean Black is in response to the theme ‘lost’ for this years ISTD competition. The typographic piece is about my Nana and her Alzheimer’s story. Alzheimer’s works with the theme of lost as it is the loss of memories and cognitive abilities. The narrative is her story from my perspective to make people feel empathic about the disease and understand how it feels to go through it. It explores before she
was diagnosed to where she is now, which is the later stages of the disease. The lost memories of Jean Black is a finalist in the Best Awards 2019 in the Public Good
Student Section. https://bestawards.co.nz/public-good-award/student-public-good/olivia-breeze/the-lost-memories-of-jean-black/

The above images are iterations of the puzzle before I got to the final product.

My concept was to create a double-sized puzzle so the viewer had to put the work together. The puzzle represents the gaps in memory and how people with Alzheimer's have to try and put the pieces together in their head to form a memory. Puzzles are very reminiscent of childhood as it is common for children to learn through puzzles. As people with Alzheimer’s go through the disease they become almost childlike again through forgetting how to do basic tasks that you learn when you're younger.

The typefaces used were san serifs as they are easier for people with Alzheimer’s to read. The two typefaces used which were Aktiv Grotesk and Metric are both very legible and readable. So wanted to distort this as a juxtaposition to its original purpose. Typographically I used the twist effect on all of my headings and subheading to make the type feel less clean and put together. I cut out parts of the text and blurred some letter and words to represents the gaps and fading memories. Some of the quotes were put upside down to show the confusion that is experienced due to the loss of memory.

This project started as a way to represent the disease through my Nana’s story. But it gave me an opportunity to really show how sad and scary Alzheimer’s is. It is aimed at people who know someone going through the disease, but really it is for everyone. I feel it’s important for everyone to be educated about Alzheimer’s as it’s not a normal part of ageing. There is a big difference between old age memory loss and Alzheimer’s.