record by C. Wittman from netherlands
designer's own words:
When looking through our own baby-books recently, we started to wonder — with all the attention we give birth, why don’t we take the same care and attention in our approach to death?
The Record is a series of notebooks to be collected and filled out over the course of one’s life. Their pages contain carefully assembled questions that prompt you to reflect on your past year and your present state of mind. By setting aside one afternoon a year, you engage with your recordbook as a living exercise.
Each individual recordbook represents a 10-year period of life. After one book is complete, a new one is started. The recordbooks are linkable, allowing them to be stored together as a growing volume over time. The system is flexible: you can receive your first book at any point in your life — as an infant, a teenager or even a grandparent - and build your story from there.
The idea culminates at the end of a life. When a person passes away, there is one final recordbook filled out by family and friends at the funeral ceremony. Then the series of books is assembled by the funeral director to be carefully bound in a personalized encasement. This becomes the departed’s ‘Record’ — an object of memorialization ready to be passed on to a loved one.
By shifting the focus from gravestones and urns to a series of practical notebooks, the funeral director can begin engaging with members of the community at any stage of life with a more consistent and positive presence. Records can be easily developed into an online archive that can be accessed the community. In this way, the business of death can become something that contributes more fully to life.
The Record provides a new way of encapsulating the departed - as lasting legacies instead of mortal remains.
Materials & Process:
The recordbooks are digitally printed and cahier stitched with a folded-flap cover for linking. A logo is screen-printed on the back cover of the recordbooks. The recordbooks are linked and bound with 1.5mm thick natural vegetable-tanned leather. The departed’s name, epitaph, family tree, etc. are blind debossed onto the cover with a hot stamping machine and custom brass stamps.
The Record can profoundly transform how we continue to memorialize our loved ones. Like a gravesite, the Record is a place to reconnect with the departed. Yet unlike a gravesite, the Record is meant to make the lives and memories of the departed far more accessible – and better understood.
Each individual recordbook represents a 10-year period of life. The recordbooks are linkable, allowing them to be stored together as a growing volume over time.[jwplayer config=”mplayer” width=”818px” height=”600px” file=”https://static.designboom.com/wp-content/compsub/370941/2013-04-16/video_1_1366156210_6a0d9eaee314c567fd72fb97ee707a36.mp4″ html5_file=”https://static.designboom.com/wp-content/compsub/370941/2013-04-16/video_1_1366156210_6a0d9eaee314c567fd72fb97ee707a36.mp4″ download_file=”https://static.designboom.com/wp-content/compsub/370941/2013-04-16/video_1_1366156210_6a0d9eaee314c567fd72fb97ee707a36.mp4″]video
The recordbooks are assembled and bound in a personalized encasement marked with the departed’s name and epitaph. This becomes the departed’s ‘Record’ – an object of memorialization to be passed on to loved ones. The covers are intended to be fully customizable.
Each recordbook contains carefully composed questions which change over time, and include space for photographs, drawings, and letters. The Records can be digitized and accessed by the community. This platform gives people a new way to tell their story.
A Concept of Continuity: The recordbook collection grows over the course of a life. With the Record, death will no longer be perceived as the end of a relationship. It can be the continuation of one. 
The Expanding Role of the Funeral Director: With the Record, the role of the funeral director can expand and diversify, allowing for a more consistent and positive presence in the community. As a steward of legacy, the director can begin engaging with people much earlier than the time of death and mourning.