No two experiences are ever the same; each color, sound, and texture feels and lives differently within us. The word qualia comes from philosophy, describing the raw, subjective sensations that make every experience uniquely our own. How does one explain what it feels like to experience the warmth of sunlight, the scent of a gardenia, or the sound of thunder? They are inherently personal experiences and cannot be explained or measured from the outside. These fleeting impressions shape 14 new designs that move between touch and sight, sensation and remembrance, forming emotional connections between what is real and what is felt.

Each collection from Zak + Fox is its own act of storytelling and world-building. Qualia is set in the final years of the last of the last midcentury – it’s a tale that is at once cinematic and nostalgic. In its companion graphic novel, a group of travelers find themselves at a remote desert motel beneath a trembling sky, their perceptions shifting as a cosmic event unfolds. Through their experiences, the collection’s ideas come to life: some see beauty while others feel awe; some ruminate on the past while others awaken to the strangeness of being alive.

Qualia is a story of how we viscerally understand things — where meaning is not fixed, but truly found in the eye of the beholder.