The Case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi

Interrogations, Intelligence and War: The Case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, by Eric Rosenbach and Jessica Reitz. The case study includes a chronological account of the last ten years of al-Libi’s life, as well as many details of the post-9/11 political context surrounding his detention. This juxtaposition illuminates not only the external factors that drove al-Libi’s treatment, but also the impact of his case on the course of future US counterterrorism policy.

With such dense information, I designed the publication to keep it as fluid and accessible as possible. The cover image is a reflection of the paper’s attempt to show some of the external factors that were influencing al-Libi’s treatment.

After developing an overall design scheme for the publication, I went back and included elements from the narrative on the content page.

This timeline is a comparison between the last ten years of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi’s life and the political context surrounding al-Libi’s detention. I designed the timeline so that each of these events could be easily compared. This was surprisingly hard to do and still keep the information legible and on two pages. The background image is of the Cincinnati speech where Bush references al-Libi’s testimony as he seeks to make the case for military action against Iraq. (Photo by Mike Simons/Getty Images)

View the timeline »

This is an alternate concept for the cover that I created early in the project. I liked the strong visual, but ultimately decided it wasn’t right for the material and never went back to refine the idea.