Design of Remembrance was explored as a practical method during workshops held in Keszthely, Hungary, in 2017.

The workshops grew from a simple observation: journeys often leave behind a collection of small material traces — notes, sketches, tickets, receipts, wrappers, maps, photographs, and other fragments. Each may carry a particular moment, but their connections can become difficult to recall over time.

The workshop introduced ways of collecting, organizing, and transforming these fragments into personal visual narratives. Participants worked with mnemonic keys, sketching, writing, composition, and simple design techniques to create handmade travel books and postcards.

The workshops were held twice in the summer of 2017 in Keszthely, Hungary, as part of a sketching course at Lake Balaton organized by Natalia Staroseltseva and Konstantin Kashin.

From the Author

It is a universal and ancient human habit to collect things — to keep a small piece of something “as a keepsake.”

After a journey, our pockets and bags may be filled with notes and sketches, candy wrappers, receipts, tickets, maps, brochures, and other fragments. Some remain meaningful years later. Others become difficult to recognize or understand.

A museum ticket, a café receipt, a sketch, a map, or a simple note such as “Today I walked along the black pine alley” can sometimes bring a journey back with remarkable precision. These small traces preserve details that memory alone may eventually lose.

Workshop Materials & Applications

• Introduction to MEMORY DESIGN: Sketching Techniques for Creating Travel Books and Mail Art — A practical module on collecting artifacts, working with mnemonic keys, and creating visual connections between fragments of an experience.
• Travel Stories & Mail Art — Participants created handmade travel journals and “from you to you” postcards — tangible records of personal journeys.
• Application in Book Illustration — The method was also applied to book design and narrative illustration, including work for E. Solovyova’s book Margarita Goes to the Sea, illustrated by Marina Razheva.