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Abidaat devotional publication spread with generous margins, a single text column and quiet ornamental detail

Publication Design

Abidaat

A quarterly magazine for Lajna Imaillah Ahmadiyya Singapore: a redesigned masthead and cover system, and the editorial pages behind it.

Client
Lajna Imaillah Ahmadiyya Singapore
Role
Publication design, typesetting, layout
Disciplines
Publication, Print

The challenge

Devotional text is read slowly, often repeatedly, and sometimes aloud. It needs a page that supports careful reading — generous line spacing, no visual interruptions, and a structure that lets someone find their place again immediately.

Two Abidaat covers, one purple with a floral band, one dark blue with a night photograph of a monument
Two issues from 2021: one masthead, two moods.

The approach

We used a single text column with deep outer margins and open leading, so the eye returns cleanly to the start of each line. Section markers are set as small, wide-spaced capitals rather than heavy headings, and ornament is reduced to one repeated device. Nothing on the page competes with the passage being read. On the covers, the masthead and strapline never move; only the ground and the image change, so a floral celebration issue, a night photograph of the Khilafat monument and a collage of twenty years of front pages all read as the same magazine.

Abidaat twentieth-anniversary special edition, its cover a grid of past front pages, beside the Ayesha magazine
The twentieth-anniversary issue, beside Ayesha, the magazine for younger members.

The outcome

The publication supports slow, repeated reading rather than skimming, and its structure stays legible in one-colour print. 20 copies were printed every quarter, with online distribution to around 80 members. Designed across 2021 and 2022, including the twentieth-anniversary special edition.

An Abidaat issue on a purple ground, cover shown with an inside spread
An Abidaat issue on a deep red ground, cover shown with an inside spread
An Abidaat issue on a navy ground, cover shown with an inside spread

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