14. DESIGN: MW
Even in this nothing’s-sacred world, a few taboos remain. Most of us have left it up to the creators of HBO’s Six Feet Under to demystify the unpleasant subject of death. Design: mw has embraced mortality with a similarly unsentimental tie-in book, which slips in and out of its case to echo the act of burial and exhumation.

Exposed binding calls to mind the knots of suture thread— apparatus of the embalmer—while a photographic history of the hearse tips a hat to the death-care industry. The book is at once a chronological scrapbook of each character—including artifacts such as handmade letters, valentines, and photos over time—as well as a source of information for the show’s aficionados.

“Death is a part of life,” says senior designer Yael Eisele, for whom the project’s significance crystallized when she received executive producer Alan Ball’s introduction text. “We mystify death, but as Alan puts it, we come to realize through critical experiences that death is part of life. And the book—the notes, the letters, the torn bits, the ephemera—it’s all everyday stuff.”

White spreads with scriptural quotations mark each new section of the book, just as white-outs introduce scenes in the show. One quote selected from the Bhagavad Gita perhaps best captures this accepting view of mortality: “Invisible before birth are all beings, and after death invisible again. They are seen between two unseens. Why in this truth find sorrow?” Tiffany Meyers