Mortal Experience
Sectors: Death Work · Ritual & Gatherings · Community
Location: Alameda, CA
Services: Brand Foundation, Copywriting, Web Design, Webflow Build & CMS, Event RSVPs & Waitlist, SEO, Analytics, Domain & Launch, Client Guide
Website: mortalexperience.com
The Challenge
Sarah Hill is a death doula. Michael Towne spent his career as a Child Life Specialist at UCSF. Together they run Mortal Experience: gatherings, rituals and one-of-a-kind ceremonies for people who want to face mortality with more meaning and less dread. They had a gathering on the calendar for November 7, but no brand and no working website. Their domain showed an error page, and RSVPs went through a page on Sarah’s other site.
They needed a site that explained something most people have never been offered, and that could fill fifteen seats.
What We Did
We built the brand, the words and the site in about seven weeks, and launched before the November gathering.
A brand that feels like a threshold. A serif-and-sans type pairing, a night palette of deep purple, teal and gold, and a moon-cycle mark that runs through the logo, dividers and buttons.
Copy in their voice. We shaped Sarah and Michael’s own words into a page that names the problem (“Most of us meet death the way we were taught to: late, alone, and by the book”), shows what they do instead, and ends in a manifesto.
Art made for them. A mycelium root network drawn by code from a photo of a seedling’s roots, and twinkling stars in the night sky of the hero.
Built in Webflow so they can run it. Each gathering is one entry in a database. Add one and its page, the Gatherings list and the homepage’s “next gathering” card all update. RSVPs come in through the site, and one switch turns the button into a waitlist when the fifteen seats are full.
Ready to be found. Search titles and descriptions, event structured data so gatherings can show up as events in Google, Google Analytics, Search Console and the domain connection.
A guide to keep it going. A plain-language website guide for adding gatherings and handling RSVPs, plus a developer handoff.
Homepage
Scroll the live page 👇
Gathering Page
Scroll the live page 👇
The Outcome
Mortal Experience launched in time for its November 7 gathering, “When the Veil Is Thin.” Sarah and Michael now have a home for the work, and they add each new gathering themselves.
See it live → mortalexperience.com
In Short
A death doula and a Child Life Specialist got a brand and a website that make facing mortality feel like an invitation.
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