Recent graphic design graduate Scarlett McAdam makes a single handmade book about sentimental object attachment during one of the most turbulent periods of her own life, combining research, personal writing and photography into a publication that is as much a creative outlet as a final year project.
The project began with mundane objects. Scarlett McAdam was photographing her own belongings when she came across two silver coins she had owned for nearly half her lifetime, and the whole direction shifted. Lucky charms, the objects we hold onto not for their use but for what they carry, became the subject. Very shortly after, her own life began to move rapidly: changing housing, losing relationships, experiencing a series of significant firsts. Between March and May 2025, she stopped treating the project as something separate from what she was living through and threw herself into it instead.
Pieces is the result: a single handmade publication, 170 by 120 millimetres, combining research, original writing and photography on the subject of sentimental object attachment, the ways in which humans hold onto things that remind them of certain times, people and places. The cover uses letterpress print and embossing, with digital print throughout. Several drafts preceded the final form, working through different sizes, photography choices, typefaces and colour before arriving at something McAdam describes as a precious and beautiful short piece on a subject that many will have felt but not examined.
The writing throughout carries real weight. “The diary in and of itself is an object used for recollection,” she writes. “Not only have we seemed to surround ourselves with the physical objects that bring us joy and remind us of other times, but we write about them too.” And elsewhere, with the particular honesty of someone who made something in the middle of difficulty: “It seems once again I have fallen victim to what could have been a useful object, which is now a relic of something which no longer exists.” That line does what the best writing on this subject does: it finds the funny and the sad in the same sentence.
Scarlett McAdam is a recent graphic design graduate with a strong interest in book design and a secondary passion for writing. Pieces is a one-of-a-kind handmade book.
Website: mcadamscarlett.carbonmade.com Instagram: @lottieesss
Pieces, 2025. Handmade publication, 170 × 120mm. Letterpress print, digital print and embossing (cover jacket). Photography: Ibrahim Yussop (@ibbidibbidoo).
