Case 01 — Product Design · Scripture · 2025
Visual Bible
Timeline
The entire Bible—eighty books, drawn as a long-form ink-wash epic and released one chapter a week in chronological order. Not a summary. Not a children's retelling. A reading product built for the way scripture was meant to unfold.
A scripture-first reading experience with two layout modes, shared reading circles, and art that carries characters across the full canon—so readers recognize Moses at the Red Sea from the same face they met in the basket.
The backstory
The brief started with a single conviction: scripture reveals itself precept upon precept, line upon line—and almost no reading product follows that arc. Most Bible apps organize by shelf order (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus), not by when events actually happened. Faces disappear between books. Context fragments. VBT reframes the question: what if the container followed the content instead of convention? The answer is a product organized as a river—one current, eighty books, one story from beginning to end.
Discovery
The central design tension was navigation. A chronological Bible is not the same Bible on the shelf—events from Kings and Chronicles interleave; the prophets speak into the histories they lived alongside. The index had to exist in two modes simultaneously: A→Z (the familiar shelf) and Story A→Ω (events in the order they happened). Neither is the "correct" one—they answer different questions, and the product has to hold both.
The art posed a secondary design constraint: character continuity across eighty books. When Moses appears at the Red Sea, he has to be unmistakably the same face the reader met in the basket—decades older, but recognizable. That continuity isn't style; it's the product doing its core job. The ink-wash reference system ensures every named character has a consistent visual identity that the art carries forward across volumes.
The challenge
Most scripture products treat the Bible as a reference—something to look up. VBT treats it as a story—something to follow. Those two mental models produce entirely different interfaces, and the brief was to build the second one from scratch, with no existing template to start from.
The approach
The design started with the reading experience, not the homepage. Two layout modes—vertical scroll for immersive long-form reading and panel-by-panel swipe for focused attention—share the same visual language and pacing. The reader is dark-first, low-chrome, and deliberately low-friction: one swipe, one chapter, one story. Circles (shared reading groups) give the product its community layer—progress visible to the group, leader-set pace, 6-character join code.
The outcome
A subscription reading product with eighty planned volumes, light and dark reading modes, a shared-reading Circles feature, and an art standard consistent enough that faces carry across the full canon. Genesis 1–5 is free, always—so the experience argues for itself before asking for a subscription.
The process
- Phase 01Reading experience
Define the two layout modes—scroll and panel—and the reader chrome before touching brand or marketing.
- Phase 02Brand & type
Cinematic and editorial: Fraunces for display, structured sans for UI, ink-wash palette drawn from the art itself.
- Phase 03Navigation architecture
Dual index—A→Z shelf order and Story A→Ω chronological—so neither mode is hidden from readers.
- Phase 04Circles
Shared reading with visible progress, a 6-character join code, and a leader-paced curriculum track.
- Phase 05Subscription & shelf
Monthly and annual tiers; a reader shelf showing the current volume and the next drop date.
"I stopped having to hold the whole story in my head. The art does it."
— Early Sojourner reader, Genesis cohort
Tested & changed
- The first navigation used a book-of-the-Bible list — felt like every other Bible appReplaced with a timeline ribbon — events placed in narrative order, not shelf order
- Panel mode started with a fixed two-panel grid — broke differently on portrait and landscapeSingle-panel per swipe — reader attention lands in one place, pacing matches the art
- Circles showed all member activity by default — felt noisy rather than communalProgress-only view: who's caught up, not when they read or what they marked
- Volumes planned
- 80
- Reading modes
- 2
- Free chapters
- 5 (Genesis)
What we learned
- L.01The navigation model is the product. Get the index wrong and everything built on top of it fights the content.
- L.02Two reading modes isn't extra work—it's the difference between a product someone uses on the couch and one they use in bed.
- L.03An art standard is a product constraint. Character continuity across eighty books only works if the style is consistent enough to carry a face forward across decades of narrative.
Founder project — designed and built by Bazell at Sojourner LLC.