The Brief of this project was to create a typographic specimen that communicates the chosen concept of ‘The Undiscovered Country’ as a metaphoric reference to death. ‘The undiscovered Country’ deals with the idea that contemporary Western society has become unfamiliar with or ‘divorced’ from the idea of death both emotionally and intellectually. The aim of the brief is to ‘Stare death in the face’ and research every aspect of it while considering historical, international, religious, scientific, societal, statistical, cultural, literary and poetic touch-points before defining the conceptual approach. The final concept must be communicated and showcased through a typographic specimen using typography as the hero as well as making use of multiple creative elements and strategies.

The brief speaks about how modern society tends to avoid analysing or dealing with the idea of death, thus they supposedly reduce it to one simple, single-minded idea to avoid delving into it’s deeper meaning. My Concept is based on Stephen Hawking’s theories of death. Much like this concept, Stephen Hawking wanted to find one single, simple-minded equation that would explain everything about life and death. He believed that time had a beginning and an end and nothing in between (reincarnation or the afterlife). In developing his Black Hole Theory he came up with the idea that science has began to overtake philosophy. People are slowly starting to trust in science, which can be proven by numbers and figures and therefore developing a mistrust in theory and philosophy where there are no right or wrong answers. This bought about the idea to create a comparison between science and philosophy, how anything and everything in the world can be documented through science, numbers and facts or interpreted through the undefined theory of philosophy. Therefore the relationship between ‘Science’ and ‘Philosophy’ became the basis of my concept.

The means through which I communicated this comparison is through the journey of Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger. I watched these two creatives speak at the Design Indaba in Cape Town in 2016 about their travels around the world, and their documentation served as the information content for my booklet. I documented their journey by splitting it into two parts; philosophy and science. Each page shows the philosophical aspect of their journey, which is the more emotional, intellectual element while the other side is more structured and mathematical and documents their journey through numbers, facts and figures. I have displayed my booklet in a box as it firstly represents the way in which modern society somewhat closes away the idea of death as a single thought and thus all that can be seen is this simple, ostentatious exterior while it's actually what’s inside that shows the depth of the theory of death. The illustration on the front represents Stephen Hawking’s ‘Black Hole Theory’ and the type communicates the comparison between science and philosophy - how Science can be seen as insignificant in the light of philosophy instead of, as Stephen Hawking proposed, ‘Science overtaking Philosophy.’