Object: book
Title: Zugzwang: Microfiction for the post-internet age
Pages: 164
Author: Gabriel Stibio
Publishing house: By Third Party
Price: $65
What is Zugzwang? A word from the author:Zugzwang is growing up with unrestricted internet access.
Zugzwang is irony poisoning.
Zugzwang is brain damage from being exposed to unfiltered opinions spewed on message boards.
Zugzwang is regurgitated pseudointellectual discourse attempting to convert those on the other side to your side but only further entrenching them in theirs.
Zugzwang is the realisation that you will never escape Samsara.
It is hope, it is longing, yearning, pining for a better world whilst becoming increasingly disillusioned by the harsh reality of coming face to face with an uncaring, indifferent universe that does not recognise your existence as anything more than the sound of a solitary tree falling in a forest when no one is around to hear it, and ultimately it is searching, finding and celebrating beauty in the absurdity of it all.
Zugzwang is life.
A message from the designer:
The graphic design for this special, first edition of Zugzwang began when I came across a meme. It was an image of Spongebob, hands behind his back and pulling a face. The caption accompanying it read "Mom: I thought I told you to clean your room” - to which the mocking Spongebob retorts “I tHoUgHt I tOld yOu tO cLeAn yOuR rOoM!”.
It wasn't funny, or particularly original - but it was a strange moment of awareness where I suddenly realised how distinctly I could hear Spongebob’s voice in my head as I was processing it. IN THE SAME WAY THAT WRITING IN ALL CAPS ARBITRARILY SIMULATES SHOUTING. But then the “joke” went deeper. The choice of Impact font coupled with the degree of artifacting that had been baked into the image from repeated compression revealed a meta-narrative that somehow made it collectively enjoyable and interesting.
And so the approach to designing Zugzwang took form. A book less didactic and more interactive. A book that samples and resamples graphic inspiration from everywhere and anywhere and recontextualizes them in novel ways to support Gabriel’s writing on both an aesthetic and meta-level.
From dialogue typeset in text message bubbles that go green when the character is no longer a stranger, to disgusting closeup images of worms that interrupt the reading experience as the narrator reveals their depraved nature. This book was designed from the ground up 28 times. A painstakingly different design approach for each and every piece.
The result is diverse and fragmented. A kaleidoscopic attempt at manipulating text and layout to uniquely communicate stories to a post-internet audience.
We have put an immense amount of love, humour, fun and care into these pages and now invite you to enjoy them as well.