Lester Coney
A family heirloom, designed and produced into a museum-quality hardcover book, handbound and professionally printed for Lester Coney, in celebration of his mother.
A celebration of the life of Mrs. Shirley Coney, captured in a custom-designed museum-quality book.
The Challenge
Lester Coney, a celebrated American leader, instrumental in the election of the first Black American President, Barack H. Obama, approached us to help him organize family heirlooms, photographs, songs, poems, stories and more collected from the life of his mother, Shirley Coney. Lester had boxes of artifacts that needed sorting and curated, and he needed guidance and creativity to decide what should be included in a book that he would distribute during a celebration with his siblings in Philadelphia, where they were all born.
The Insight
This was a work of high trust in handling irreplaceable objects and also being intentional in deciding what memories would be appropriate to capture and digitize in a shareable permanent book.
Our Idea
After collaborating with Lester and learning about the love, family, faith and community his mother created and spending time discovering the precious items he collected the years, we decided the best way capture his selected memories so they could be widely shared with his siblings, would be to digitize items to create a custom designed book featuring the stories, photographs and scriptures that Mrs. Coney loved and print the book on archival acid-free paper so it would last through the generations.
The Work
Custom museum-quality archival book
Invitation
Digital archive of artifacts
The Result
“Celebrating Mrs. Shirley Coney: A Life at 80 Years” was born. We also created an accompanying invitation for the family that was planning to convene during a celebration from across the country.
We are forever grateful to Mr. Coney for trusting us with his family heirlooms, stories and blessed memories.