Client: United Nations International Organization on Migration
Date: October - December 2025
Tools: InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Word, Excel
Category: Publication design
Brief: Design and layout of the Manual on Migration, a 300+ page humanitarian response guidance publication, divided into 15 training modules, within UN IOM branding, aimed at government officials and civil servants
Outcome: Full print and online pdf delivered within one month of briefing to tight schedule and budget constraints, clear UN branding along with logo presence of 3 collaborating governments (Bangladesh, Canada and Italy), using article tagging and image descritions for accessibility. I also managed the printing, including exporting proofs with correct settings (colour, bleeds, trim), designing additional covers with spines (calculating width) for perfect binding, and signing off final proofs.
Fifteen Authors, One Designer, a 10-hour Time Difference
In October and November 2025, I worked with the UN International Organization on Migration Bangladesh team on their Manual on Migration. I began by presenting several different cover and internal layout concepts, all within the UN IOM brand guidelines. Once this was finalised, they sent their Word document. The writing team was large, with different authors for each chapter, and multiple stakeholders providing feedback at every stage.
A Guidance Publication with Hundreds of Pages
This is a large document with nearly 400 pages, so it required careful workflow between the original Word draft, and InDesign. I worked within Word to ensure consistency of style throughout until I was certain that placement into my primary text frame and style-mapping would be seamless. I used master pages, paragraph styles with automatic numbering, and cross-referencing for maximum efficiency. I ensured accessibility of the online pdf using article tagging to optimise for screen readers.
It's extremely text-heavy, meaning a lot of my focus went into clearly dividing up the modules / chapters visually, and ensuring that there was plenty of white space to avoid overwhelming the reader. I included interactivity on each page of the online version allowing easy navigation between chapters and themes. I colour-coded the chapters and added colour 'tabs' along the right for easy navigation. In the online version, I ensured that both these tabs, and the automatically-generated contents pages, were interactive.
As with all my projects, I ensured that the print proof was exported with correct settings, and communicated with the printers throughout the process. I created an Excel document detailing figures and images to ensure that version history was recorded for easy future updates.
Photographs and Graphics to Tell Stories
I advised the team on using graphics and tables to present information. I also wanted to include a lot of human stories. This book is a technical guide to train government and civil service representatives on understanding the broad intersectional migration landscape in Bangladesh, prioritising dignity and human rights in their policymaking. This is a humanitarian guideline. I worked with the multimedia team at the IOM to source culturally appropriate images from their media library, ensuring that proper credits were used. I edited these in Photoshop for perfect placement in the document. I also had to pay particular attention to the stakeholder logo presence, sourcing high-quality versions and ensuring that placement was in line with their expectations, and their brand guidelines.
