The Life Before Me is an experimental and personal zine that explores, through photos and short texts, the past of the author’s parents and the life they lived before her birth. The goal of the project is to reflect on the past and understand the context that preceded her own story, forming a “full picture” of a life she never knew.

The idea for the project came from reflections on my family’s past and the realization that I didn’t know much about my history or the history of those who raised me. As a designer, I took this opportunity to get closer to my parents and understand the stories they lived before I existed. Additionally, the project was a way to explore my personal design style, without the work limitations or pre-existing client guidelines that surround my everyday life.

To create the zine, I relied solely on my family’s photographic archives, searching through old albums and boxes for photos that could enrich the visual narrative I wanted to create.

I carefully curated the images, selecting moments that represented my parents’ individuality as well as scenes that showed them as a couple. After the selection, all the photos underwent a digitization process, done with great care due to the delicate condition of some of the old pictures.

Since the goal was to showcase the past as it was, the photos were kept in their original state, with no image editing, to preserve the analog look and evoke the nostalgia we feel when flipping through family photo albums.

Then I created a simple visual identity to guide the zine’s storytelling. I chose to work on the project in an editorial format for two reasons: to explore an area of design I don’t often get to work on in my day-to-day job, and to evoke traditional family photo albums, which have always been present in my family.