Death and the Penguin
Category
UI/UX Design
Mentor
Noa Kahana
Year
2025
Opening titles sequence for the novel Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov. Using the newspaper motive to reflect the book’s themes of death, corruption,
and quiet absurdity, revealing names only when they’re crossed out, just like the "X's" in Viktor’s obituaries.
Brief
The goal of this project was to create an animated opening sequence for a book,
as if it were a film. The task focused on building a visual and motion language that reflects the themes, tone, and mood of the story.
Concept Development
Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov is a dark comedy about Viktor, a struggling writer in post-Soviet Kyiv who is hired to prepare newspaper obituaries for people who are still alive. Known only as “X’s,” his subjects soon begin dying one by one, pulling him into a world of corruption and quiet danger.
The opening sequence unfolds entirely through newspaper pages, where cast and crew names remain hidden until they are crossed out with an “X.” By revealing each name only after it is crossed out, the sequence echoes Viktor’s obituaries and reflects a story in which death hides in plain sight and Viktor is never fully in control.
