The Seniors of Rochester series started as a simple idea where seniors sign up through a google form to be documented in a way that feels personal. We didn’t want it to feel like a directory but more so a memory capsule. Our process began with thinking about the audience and what would a graduating senior actually want to look back on five years from now

We created a set of prompts that encouraged reflection rather than resume style responses. It was around 150 words so students wouldn’t feel overwhelmed with how much they have to write. This series is heavily inspired by the “Humans of New York” series on Instagram.

In the end, the goal was about authenticity and once responses came in, I edited lightly for clarity but kept the original voice because it was important that each profile felt like the student.

In addition to that, we developed a consistent layout system (by also playing around and experimenting with layouts for the first two posts), showing name hierarchy and major as well as a simple, white, black and yellow color palette. we also made sure to have negative space to avoid overwhelming the viewer. Since the project lives both digitally and physically, we designed with adaptability in mind (ex: square social posts, story versions of the posts, and page ready formats in Canva for print.