Being Mortal
Even though death is like a shadow over life, that could happen anywhere and anytime, we all choose to stay silence. It is only when disaster strikes unexpectedly, touching everyone’s lives, that we find ourselves lost and unprepared.

This project is a public exploration of the conversation around life and death. If we can confront the inevitability of life’s end in advance, perhaps it would help to have a more complete and meaningful existence.

Through an experimental book, typography, motion graphics, infographics, and films, this project attempted to bring this often-avoided topic into public discussion. Using a subtle and soft visual language, it conveys five fundamental aspects of death in relation to life: inevitability, randomness, limitation, universality, and naturalness. With the power of design, the project aims to make death perceptible, to desensitise the fear surrounding it, and ultimately to inspire a deeper awareness of mortality - "To contemplate death in advance is to contemplate freedom in advance."


即使死亡犹如生命巨大的阴影无处不在,无时不在,我们依然默契地三缄其口。直到某天灾难突如其来与每个人都息息相关,才忽觉茫然无措、毫无招架之力。这个项目是面向大众的一次关于生死话题的探讨。如果我们提前了解生命必将终结的危机,也许对于书写更完满的人生就会出现新的转机。

项目通过实验性书籍、字体、动态图形、信息图表、影片等设计,尝试在公共场合探讨这个大众沉默回避的话题。以委婉温和、富有隐喻的视觉形式,向观者传达死亡之于生命的五个面向:必然、随机、有限、普遍、自然。希望以设计之力,令死亡感光、让死亡脱敏,继而引发死亡觉悟。“预先思考死亡,就是预先思考自由。”


Team: Zhehui Zhou, Yating Wang, Chuying Zheng