The role of design and archives in the remembrance and commemoration of the Great War and WWII Commonwealth war dead

This article presents part of the initial stages of a research project exploring the design processes through which the Commonwealth preserves the names of the dead in perpetuity. It will focus principally on how the names of the dead are recorded. It will examine the process of documenting the position of the graves and the names of the dead in battle fields, how the names were ordered in indices, classified by location within the cemetery registers, verified by next of kin by means of 'V' forms, accessed by the public through cemetery maps using a system of plot and row coordinates and finally preserved through inscriptional lettering on headstones and memorials.