ICAN ANNUAL REPORT 2022
EDITORIAL DESIGN THAT SURVIVED 100 ROUNDS OF REVISION
I led design and production on ICAN's 72-page 2022 Annual Report — a year of grantmaking, policy advocacy, and on-the-ground peacebuilding work spanning conflict zones from Libya to Pakistan to Cameroon. The real test wasn't the page design. It was keeping that design intact through over 100 rounds of stakeholder revision.
Role: Creative & Brand Director (DHM Media Group, client engagement)
Scope: Editorial Systems • Data Visualization • Photo Retouching • Stakeholder Management • Production
THE CHALLENGE
This wasn't a static design problem. Content moved constantly across departments and approval rounds — financials updated, program data revised, leadership feedback layered on top of earlier rounds. The job was building a system flexible enough to absorb that much change without the report ever looking like it had been stitched together under pressure.
About 90% of the client-provided photography needed retouching, color correction, or repair before it was publication-ready.
THE SYSTEM
I built a modular editorial framework — consistent typography hierarchy, a custom pull-quote treatment, a repeatable grid — built specifically so content could be added, cut, or reordered without breaking the page. That system is the reason a dense policy report can hold a hand-illustrated conference recap, a world map of eight country case studies, and a full financial statement, and still read as one publication instead of three.
WHAT IT TOOK TO SHIP
100+ revision rounds. Constant version control. Diplomacy with stakeholders who each had a legitimate stake in how their section read. None of that shows up on the page — which is exactly the point. The reader only sees a clear, polished 72-page story about a year of work in some of the hardest places in the world to do it.
THE OUTCOME
Great editorial design isn't made in a vacuum. This report is proof it can survive real organizational complexity — competing priorities, evolving content, dozens of stakeholders — and still come out the other side clear, consistent, and genuinely well-made.