Degree Show 2025
Aijun Yao
MA Art and Design
My work focuses on picturebook design as a medium for emotional healing. Through visual metaphors, I explore memory, silence, and caregiving in Alzheimer’s journeys. Rooted in practice-led illustration, my project ‘Travel to the End of the Universe’ invites readers to travel across grief and tenderness, seeking moments of recognition and quiet strength in visual narrative.

Book Cover The cover of Travel to the End of Universe uses hand-drawn textures and a monochrome palette to evoke a dreamlike cosmos. A lonely train travels through stars, symbolising memory’s last journey. The quote anchors the theme: love and companionship persist, even as dementia erases shared time.

Frontispiece This cover depicts a lonely train sailing into the starry void, symbolising the final journey of memory and love. The textured monochrome etching reflects the weight of time and forgetting, inviting viewers into a poetic visual metaphor of Alzheimer’s caregiving.

Content page This page captures the arrival of Mrs. Liu’s final train, where the fading tracks and wind-blown mist create a visual metaphor that sets the stage for the journey ahead. Using digital painting to simulate the texture of drypoint engraving and employing a minimalist composition, the image conveys the solemn stillness of farewell and the solitude that lingers at the edge of memory.