Description:

The lives of our loved ones are deeply interwoven with our own. This connection is everlasting; their memories continue to send ripples into the world beyond their departure. When my dad passed away at the end of 2020, I came to realise how much his story had transformed my views on life. This project is a reflection on his life and how our stories are forever interwoven.

The final motion outcome is a journey across time, reliving my late father’s story through the visual metaphor of water and its changing states. Water, ice and steam together illustrate a very personal yet relatable story - one of interconnected contrast - health and illness, past and present, impermanence and everlastingness. The element of water will always be deeply connected to memories of my dad, a professional sailor.

While this project utilised a hybrid of digital and analogue mediums, the final aesthetic is that of a ‘living journal’. Watercolour illustrations and reflective writing emerge from the paper and flow through a sequence of crystallised memories.

The voices are those of my immediate family, and together this is our tribute to the memory of my dad.

As a tactile extension of the motion design, a series of postcards took form- maintaining the aesthetic qualities, and retaining the primary themes and messages. Written by my family, these postcards were an opportunity to say goodbye while honouring my father’s one year anniversary. Encased in an intricately folded envelope, this now lives on as a time capsule of memories. A booklet was also crafted to expand on the story and collates artifacts from my design and experimentation processes.

This project has ultimately been one of reflection, expression and exploration. My hope is that this project could offer support to others going through times of loss, and encourage others to embark on their own inner journey of creative expression and reflection as a healing and integration process.