VE4: Kapow!

Writing in London, Adam Thirlwell developed his novel Kapow! during the wave of revolutionary protests occurring throughout the Arab world in the spring of 2011, known as the Arab Spring. Thrilwell wrote of two interconnected characters—living in London and Egypt—who are transformed by the ongoing revolutions. Published by Visual Editions, this book employs the firm’s approach to visual writing, in which the design reflects the content of the book to engage the reader in a new and unexpected experience. Studio Frith’s design reflects the novel’s plot and parallels the disruption inherent in a revolution: shapes of text are disjointed from the main body, rotated, reinserted, and often extended to a hidden fold-out page. Thirwell described how the story was formed based on geographically dislocated facts about the Arab Spring he heard in London, which created a reality based on both fact and rumor; the book’s design reinforces this idea through the fragmented components that force the reader to a disjointed experience.