Wayword is a brand I created for my senior thesis. In a nutshell, the vision and purpose of Wayword is to preserve family history through storytelling.
The way in which Wayword would solve this problem, or need really, to preserve family history is by literally giving individuals the power to record their family history. Specifically, the family’s oral history... Even more specifically recording it onto vinyl.
There are two ways individuals can record their stories. First of which is a physical location, and second is a “rolling recording studio,” if you will. The traveling studio’s purpose is to meet the people where they are. Traveling to cities that no physical location is present as well as going to storytelling conventions and festivals, to reach people exactly where they are.
On Waywords website individuals can go back and listen to, or download their session anytime they want, because vinyl is great, but it might not be practical in all scenarios. This flexibility will allow individuals to easily share their sessions with their family and friends. The website is also where you can request more copies of your vinyls, custom printed vinyl covers as well as transcribed books/inserts of your session.
This is an example of one of the custom albums. It is about my grandmother and her experience sewing, and was made in collaboration with her. The album sleeve looks like a small sewing hoop, the inside of the hoop is a cut out showcasing the cover of the insert. As you slide everything out of the sleeve you can see that each piece of the album is unique and considered to correspond to the story. The paper album sleeve is made from clothing pattern paper. The booklet contains the transcript of the stories on the album just like lyrics to your favorite song.
