AU Free Movement Protocol Desk Study
Client
African Union
Category
Editorial Design
Year
2025
The brief was a dense legal and policy document. The AU's desk study on the challenges faced by member states in ratifying and implementing the Protocol on Free Movement, Right of Residence and Right of Establishment was, by its nature, text-heavy and procedurally complex. The design challenge was to make it readable without diluting its authority.
The concept I landed on was movement itself. Since the entire subject of the publication was about the free movement of people across borders, I let that idea drive the visual language. Images in motion, people mid-step, figures crossing thresholds, visual energy running through a document that could otherwise have sat completely still. It gave the dense policy content something to breathe against.
The added complexity was the bilingual format. The publication needed to exist in both English and French within a single physical volume. The solution was a tete-beche structure, English from one end, French from the other, meeting at a full-bleed image spread in the centre that served as the axis between both languages. Every margin, page number and section opener had to work in both orientations simultaneously.
It was one of the most technically demanding publications I have designed and one of the most conceptually satisfying to get right.
