Werner yesterday told me that the questions you have to ask yourself before you start creating things are:
What do I want to say?
How do I think?
How can I organize this thinking?
-> to cast it to others
he meant that you can look at a publication in three ways. As pages, as double pages or as a long line of everything lying next to each other kind of like a strip. He said every story should be seen as this and only if you have this you can go back to the double pages and then to the single pages to layout.
He told me when Lars von Trier starts a new movie he locks himself up in a room with no window and paints a long line from door to door and then he paints lines that cross this main timeline in an evenly rhythm and only then he starts adding the storyline to it.

What do I want to say? What is the headline of all this?
I had different things written down wich were important to me
to facilitate grief
to let grief find expression
to help and support
to enhance transparency
to show the circle of life
but most of all I want to show that dealing with the topic you get a feeling for the immensity of life.
The challging aspect will be to find an overall design that gives you a feeling for this.

As there exist several different sizes and paper goods in my collection it is to think about how to fold it. As a designer it is an important question to ask. Does this binding fit my topic or would another do better. It is important that decisions aren’t made because they look cool but because they make sense.
So I had to question wich folding suits and wich doesn’t. The Origami for example (red) is too playful. The Leporello is a nice metaphor for the circle of life because, if you finished reading and you come to the end you just turn over the last page and you have a new beginning.

As another attempt to visualiseI tried floral ornaments and shapes in silkscreen on different types of paper.