Work / A family, on the balance
A family, on the balance.
A bilingual cost-benefit analysis report for the Doha International Family Institute — the economics of family-policy choices, designed to sit on both an economist's desk and a policymaker's reading stack.
· Overview
The brief
Cost-benefit analysis is a dry subject until the thing being weighed is a family. DIFI's report examined the economics of policy decisions that directly affect Qatari families — childcare, parental leave, housing — and needed a publication that honoured the subject's weight.
The cover closes on a single intimate portrait of a Qatari family on a black field — the human stakes before any chart lands in the interior. We ran a full options round with the client before final approval, exploring three tonal directions.
Scope on this report extended beyond design — Freezil also proof-read the full bilingual manuscript before final print.
3
Design options explored
2
Languages · AR + EN
60+
Pages · bilingual
1
Policy instrument
· Approach
How we worked
01 — Human first, chart second
Led with family photography. The economics arrive as weight, not noise.
02 — Options round
Three cover directions presented side by side. DIFI picked the quietest.
03 — Chart-library upgrade
Expanded DIFI's recurring chart vocabulary for the specific economic visualisations this report needed.
04 — Policy-ready packaging
Print master for distribution to ministerial offices, compressed digital edition for DIFI.org.
05 — Editorial proof-read
Economic analyses are unforgiving of typos — a misplaced decimal in a cost table can change an entire policy recommendation. We proof-read every figure, every formula, every citation, and every bilingual pair before the report went to print.
· From the work
Directions explored
A selection of the design directions we presented before the final was chosen. Every project that ships to a policymaker's desk starts with a proper options round.
· Next project
A pandemic, in population data. →
Publishing a policy analysis?
Share the manuscript and the policy audience. Design options proposal back within a business day.
· Related projects
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Childhood, in the data. — DIFI
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