The goal of this project was to create an index with a coherent, repetitive structure—a publication cataloguing items within a chosen topic. The topic of military occupations emerged from time spent in Israel and witnessing the Israeli occupation over Palestine firsthand. What became apparent during research was just how many occupations exist, both historically and ongoing.

Defining which conflicts qualify as military occupations is not straightforward—different institutions emphasise different elements, and consensus is elusive. The index relies primarily on two sources: the Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts project (RULAC, now War WATCH) for ongoing occupations, and a Wikipedia list for historical ones, with further research conducted where contradictions arose.

Design Concept

Research into what defines a military occupation revealed one common element across all definitions: one state exercising control over another, effectively expanding territory. This became the central design concept. Each occupation receives a double spread, with the occupying state on one side and the occupied on the other. The occupying state claims more physical space on the spread, visually expanding its territory, while information about the occupied is printed upside down—requiring readers to shift perspective.

Visual representation of occupied territories through graphic elements and spatial hierarchy.

Yellow was chosen deliberately for its urgency without aggression—less confrontational than red, yet more pressing than blue. It's a colour frequently associated with human rights contexts, lending the publication an immediate visual identity. The table of contents serves a dual purpose: navigation and overview. Structured as a timeline, it reinforces duration as a primary axis for comparing occupations—transforming an editorial convention into a data visualisation. At a glance, the stark discrepancies become visible: Israel's occupation over Palestine stretches across 67+ years and counting, while the UAE's occupation of Yemen's Socotra island lasted just over a year.

Physical Production

The yellow stripe exists physically—actually covering discoverable information rather than just printed on top. When readers make the effort, they can uncover hidden cultural imagery beneath. This metaphor demanded a custom binding approach and non-standard document setup, where spreads with variable stripe widths required pages to be treated as single units rather than standard double spreads.

The production plan involved printing the yellow stripes as full pages, then cutting them to the desired width. However, standard pagination would have broken after cutting—page numbers would no longer align with the physical pages. The solution was to set up each spread with the stripe as a single page rather than a regular double spread, keeping numbering consistent and dynamic regardless of stripe width.

Pagination challenges and document setup—green lines indicate master page dependencies, magenta lines distinguish between two-page spreads (dashed) and single-page spreads (solid).

This approach introduced new obstacles. The document could no longer export as single pages—only spreads—meaning the print shop couldn't impose the document automatically. A custom imposition system had to be developed, and with hand-binding planned and pages grouped into signatures, creep calculations had to be added manually.

Prototyping the binding to enable physically layered content.

Designing Systems

To keep every change dynamic, the document uses an array of interdependent master pages—some built on top of others. If a line position changes on the most basic master page, all subsequent pages inherit that change while preserving their individual alterations. This cascading architecture meant the entire publication could adapt to late-stage decisions without manual propagation of changes.

This systems-oriented approach is central to how I work—whether in editorial design, interface development, or data structures. The goal is always the same: build frameworks that absorb complexity so the final output remains coherent. In this project, that meant custom imposition templates, creep calculators for hand-binding, and a master page hierarchy that could flex without breaking. Even when a system will only be used once, investing in its architecture pays off in precision and adaptability.

Military occupations remain one of the most persistent forms of state violence—often normalised, frequently disputed, and rarely resolved. This index does not claim neutrality; it was born from witnessing occupation firsthand and wanting to make visible what political language often obscures. The design choices—territory as layout, duration as timeline, cultural erasure as physical concealment—are attempts to translate abstract power dynamics into tangible experience.

The project moved through several phases: extensive research to define scope, conceptual development to find a visual language, technical problem-solving to realise the binding, and iterative prototyping to refine the physical object. Each stage demanded different skills—from information design and typographic systems to production planning and hand-finishing. The result is a publication that functions both as reference and as statement: a structured catalogue that refuses to let its subject remain invisible.