Reimagining a traditional reading experience for the digital age.

A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures is a non-linear open-access digital work of scholarship exploring a view of Islam that shifts and interconnects across centuries and continents. Designed by Studio Rainwater working in close collaboration with author Shahzad Bashir and Brown University Digital Publications, the project demonstrates a creative alternative to conventional monograph publishing.

Website landing page desktop and mobile view
Website landing page desktop and mobile view

Tasked with creating an engaging user experience that would draw readers more deeply into the content, we designed a dynamic interface that echoes the book’s investigation of a multi-faceted view of Islam and its relationship to time.

Animated table of contents showing the connected sections of each chapter
Animated table of contents showing the connected sections of each chapter

“This groundbreaking interface performs, rather than simply states, the book’s argument—namely, that we see pasts and futures as fields of unlimited possibility that come alive through a combination of close observation and ethical positioning.”

—Shahzad Bashir

Author, Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Humanities at Brown University
Desktop screen view of a chapter
Desktop screen view of a chapter
Animated box showing the definition of a term used in the publication
Animated interactive grid of icons showing related sections in other chapters
Screens showing how images are displayed on the website
Screens showing how images are displayed on the website

The design takes cues from the patterns and iconography of Islam while embracing a minimalism that allows the many artifacts — including images, video, and texts — collected in the book to be the central focus. We also designed a series of stylized infographics illustrating and explaining the central assertions of the work.

Set of icons used on the website
Set of icons used on the website
Infographic appearing on the website showing different timelines intersecting
Infographic appearing on the website showing different timelines intersecting
Example of a pie chart infographic used on the website
Example of an infographic used on the website

Published by MIT Press, the publication is free for anyone to access through a web browser allowing a wide range of global audiences entry into the work.

The book was shortlisted for the 2023 Royal Institute of Philosophy Nayef Al-Rodhan Book Prize in Transdisciplinary Philosophy and received a glowing review in Foreign Affairs.

Readers enter this inventive and fascinating electronic work at various times and places—from contemporary Isfahan to fourteenth-century Samarkand, from the skyline of modern Istanbul to the expanse of the Arabian desert—and can make unexpected connections, experiencing Bashir’s vivid elaboration of the breadth of Islam with each click.

—Lisa Anderson, Foreign Affairs

Three mobile screens from the website

“Within 10 days of publication, A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures attracted 1,700 new users from 71 countries (scholarly monographs typically have a print run in the low to midhundreds, by contrast).”

—Allison Levy

Director of Brown University Digital Publications

PROJECT SCOPE

Publication Design, Website Design

PROJECT FOCUS

Education, Research, Digital Humanities