Death, Redesigned
In California Sunday, Jon Mooallem profiles Paul Bennett, the chief creative officer at the multifaceted branding and design company Ideo who began to see death as a design opportunity after his father passed away. Mooallem follows Bennett through the project’s successes (partnership with San Francisco’s Zen Hospice Project) and failures (an app for organizing posthumous affairs called After I Go) from 2013 to February of this year. “A year earlier, Bennett’s crusade against death seemed to be motivated entirely by his frustration with the way his father died,” Mooallem writes. “But over time it was evolving into something more nuanced, inclusive, and humane.”