Work / Eight reports. Two languages. One voice
Eight reports. Two languages. One voice.
Editorial design for WISE 2023 — eight bilingual reports unified into one visual voice, produced in Doha by Freezil for the WISE summit.
A four-year editorial system for WISE's flagship research programme — dense policy work made readable in Arabic and English, with typographic parity where neither language felt like a translation of the other.
· Overview
The brief
WISE's research — dense, footnoted, policy-adjacent — had the problem all serious research has: the people who most needed to read it rarely got past page three. The 2023 programme, like the ones before it, had to read like a journal but feel like a magazine.
The harder constraint was bilingual parity. WISE publishes in Arabic and English simultaneously. Neither edition could be the junior one. The grid, rhythm, and hierarchy had to hold in both scripts without resorting to a "mirror" gimmick.
8
Reports · 2019–2023
2
Languages per title
120+
Pages · longest issue
1
Editorial system
· Approach
How we worked
01 — A grid that held both scripts
A twelve-column modular grid, baseline-locked, tuned so that Arabic's vertical rhythm and English's horizontal rhythm shared the same drop caps and pull-quote positions. Two editions, one page-numbered spine.
02 — Data, not decoration
Custom chart styles for every recurring data type. No 3D pies, no gradient fills. Every figure had a source line, a read order, and a one-line takeaway — so a scanner could get the headline without the article.
03 — Covers that worked as a set
Each year's cover used a single typographic gesture — a number, a verb, a stacked word — over a muted field. Line them up on a shelf and you see an arc, not a pile.
04 — A template WISE could run
InDesign libraries, character/paragraph styles, and a short handover guide so the WISE team could produce year-on-year issues without recommissioning the system from scratch.
· From the work
Spreads from the 2023 report.
Spreads from the WISE 2023 research report.
· Next project
Mapping child protection. →
Have a report to publish?
Share the manuscript, the audience, and the languages. A sample spread and a quote back within a business day.
· Related projects
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Childhood, in the data. — DIFI
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