The Xonerated Website and Materials Support
Challenge
In 1966, Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Khalil Islam were wrongly accused, tried, convicted, and imprisoned for the murder of Malcolm X. Despite a plethora of exculpatory evidence; these innocent men spent decades behind bars. Finally, they were paroled in the 1980s, and in 2021, after seemingly endless legal battles, Aziz and Islam’s convictions were overturned.
Our friends at August asked us to create a website that would announce the exoneration and live publicly on the web as the authoritative source for the case. The goal was to share their stories so visitors could learn from the past and ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself. The project was confidential, the timeline was tight, and the trove of cross-media content spanned decades. Nevertheless, we were proud to take up the challenge.
Approach
We had a tiny window to pull the site together, and missing the deadline would have severely impacted the effectiveness of the project. Therefore, to be more efficient, once we were given the official name #theXonerated, we started developing the basic visual concepts (including a logo) simultaneously with the site’s infrastructure.
After some exploration, we produced a simple and striking logo for #theXonerated, featuring the name with the prominent X standing out. We gave the X a slab font that evokes a Roman numeral and old newsprint to pay homage to the era when the case first made headlines. For the site itself, we drew inspiration from a Netflix documentary about the case and used sepia tones, grayscale, and splashes of red to give the site a historic feel that matches the old photos, newspaper clippings, and videos the site would house. Our goal was to create a stylistic approach that was compelling and sleek but also trustworthy and authoritative to ensure that the serious content was given proper weight.
Designing a site like this requires careful planning and an intuitive information architecture. Presenting 50 years' worth of documents, written content, photos, video clips, and a comprehensive timeline of events in a digestible manner is no small task. In addition, the information needed to be visually and narratively coherently to engage users without overwhelming them. To accomplish this, we used large headers, subtle design elements, and lots of open space to give the information breathing room and allow users to absorb it properly.
Results
Despite the pressures of a quick timeframe and a high-profile case, we implemented an efficient workflow that helped us produce a beautiful site that presents historical life and death content with sobriety and dignity. The user experience is smooth, the aesthetic is impactful, and the site is regarded as an authoritative source of information about this miscarriage of justice. We’re incredibly proud of theXonerated.com and of our role in helping to tell Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Khalil Islam’s story.
Our goal was to serve as an informational resource to those seeking deeper information on Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Khalil Islam’s case and ultimate exoneration. Here is a list of the site’s success by the numbers:
22% Bounce Rate. The bounce rate shows the percentage of visitors who leave a site after looking at only one page. A good bounce rate is about 47%. The low bounce rate of theXonerated.com shows that the site drew visitors to explore beyond the homepage.
4:25 Average Session Duration. Further proof of the site’s engaged audience is the excellent average session duration of 4:25 minutes. A good average session duration is between 2-4 minutes.
