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.
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.
“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
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.
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
