Astana: Multimedia Design Magazine, Founder & Editor

A printed issue of Astana open on a black ground, its spread running from a bright green title page into a densely set text page with green diagrams.

A multimedia design magazine exploring architecture, urbanism, and creative practices across the Global South.

Astana is an independent design magazine that I founded, built, and ran from concept to publication. I led the editorial vision, platform design, production workflows, and distribution strategy, publishing three full issues that experiment with how architectural and urban narratives can be told online.

Astana blends essays, interactive stories, comics, videos, and speculative formats, treating design journalism not as static content but as an experiential system. Across all issues, the project prioritizes critical inquiry, accessibility, and play, using interactivity and narrative structure to invite readers to actively navigate ideas rather than passively consume them.

Issue Development and Evolution

Issue 1: Editorial Foundation

Established Astana’s core identity: a platform for design discourse rooted in the Global South, combining critical writing with visual storytelling and experimental layouts. This issue defined the magazine’s tone, thematic focus, and commitment to interdisciplinary perspectives.

Read issue 1

A grid of article cards in strong flat colours, each pairing a headline or pull quote with an illustration or photograph, ranging from a red isometric interior to a green field of type. — The first issue's article grid, one card per piece.

Black and white collage of antique objects, a gramophone with its horn, a cast iron stove and a coffee grinder, cut out and overlapped on white. — The first issue's article grid, one card per piece.

Issue 2: 3D Spatial Magazine

For the second issue, I initiated and directed a fully 3D version of the magazine, transforming articles into explorable spatial environments. Readers navigated content as architecture, encountering ideas through movement, scale, and interaction rather than linear scrolling.

This edition was exhibited at the Buildspace Accelerator Final Exhibition in San Francisco, demonstrating the potential of gamified journalism as a public-facing design medium. It also surfaced practical limits around accessibility and device constraints, which directly informed the next phase of development.

Read issue 2

A pale mint 3D scene, an array of green blocks standing like dominoes on a plane with two red spheres, captioned with instructions to press WASD to move. — Articles as space, navigated with WASD.

A pink 3D scene of scattered white and orange floating tiles at different heights, a large letter A set into the plane at the right. — Articles as space, navigated with WASD.

The second issue was also part of the Lahore Biennale, where Astana held a panel on storytelling and urban revitalization titled “The Glorified Mistri”. This continued in an IAP BAE collaborative workshop on Critical Architectural Journalism.

Issue 2 and its events were made with Shumyle Haider, Ravail Khan and Khadija Rehman. The first and third issues were produced solo.

The Astana issue 02 cover in deep red with three outlined flowers, beside its intro page in pale yellow headed Intro in large red serif type. — Issue 02, cover and opening page.

Event poster in dark red headed The Glorified Mistri, a collateral with the Lahore Biennale, listing the venue as The Last Word in Lahore on 27th October 2024, with panellists Maira Khan, Farooq Soomro and Haseeb Rehman. — Issue 02, cover and opening page.

Issue 3: Narrative-Driven Interactive Web Issue

In response, Issue 3 shifted toward a more accessible but equally experimental format: an interactive website structured around a guiding storyline.

Key elements included:

Custom 2D characters and scenes
A narrative path connecting essays and features
A recurring mascot providing satirical commentary
A newsletter extending the editorial voice beyond the site

This issue balanced playfulness with clarity, reinforcing Astana’s identity as a magazine that treats storytelling, humor, and interaction as serious design tools.

Read issue 3

Illustrated interior scene in pink and deep red, a low table and radio in front of a wall hung with a framed portrait of the magazine's mascot, with instructions to click on the notebook. — The third issue, read by moving through drawn rooms.

An article page headed Architectural Narratives Inspired by Persian Miniature, with a strip of miniature-style illustrations above and the mascot character beside the body text. — The third issue, read by moving through drawn rooms.

Role and Responsibilities

Founded and directed the magazine independently
Defined editorial vision and thematic direction
Oversaw design systems, interaction concepts, and platform decisions
Coordinated collaborators: writers, designers, developers
Managed production timelines, publishing, and public presentation

Astana functions as both a publishing platform and a research practice, testing how architecture and urban discourse can be made more engaging, participatory, and culturally situated.