Approximately 581 journalists are currently imprisoned around the world for doing their jobs and helping to expose injustice. Many have been incarcerated for years, with the fates of several still unknown. Most have little communication with the outside world, unable to document their plight, or write about topics close to their hearts.

To help them pursue their ambitions in the face of oppression, Paris-based NGO Reporters Without Borders, or Reporters sans frontières (RSF), has partnered with popular French biweekly magazine Society and creative agency BETC to create a one-off issue that spotlights their stories and situations.

Titled The Prison Papers, the publication features interviews with eight different journalists who have found themselves put wrongfully behind bars. These articles were painstakingly crafted over the course of nine months by in-house writers at Society, who risked their own safety and livelihoods to create the groundbreaking pieces.

The featured journalists are Irfan Mehraj, Jimmy Lai, Amadou Vamoulké, Maryna Zolatava, Narges Mohammadi (winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2023), Mohamed ‘Oxygen’, Dawit Isaak, and Jose Rubén Zamora.

Imprisoned in countries such as India, Hong Kong, Cameroon, Iran, Belarus, Egypt, Eritrea and Guatemala, they have found ways to work from the confines of their prison cells with the Society editorial team and have their voices heard once again. For those that were harder to contact, testimonies from their relatives, friends and colleagues were used to construct profile pieces that hope to convey the narratives that the journalists would want to be told.

This project is just the latest in a long line of campaigns by RSF that draw much-needed attention to press freedom. Speaking on this, Olivier Aumard, executive creative director at BETC Paris, says that the campaign was “the result of a long and challenging process to achieve something incredibly important, which had never been done before: giving back voices to journalists who had been silenced. Society’s editorial team has put itself at their service by designing this special issue for and with them, a symbol of their unwavering commitment to freedom of press.”

The issue uses bold graphic design to help spotlight the stories of these journalists, mixing punchy display typefaces with vibrant colour palettes in order to highlight important information. This is balanced by spacious layouts that help to not overwhelm the reader, and provide breathing room in what is naturally a heavy read. Elsewhere, a simple illustration style has been adopted for the issue’s front cover, with two red hands holding two white pencils that resemble prison bars foregrounded against a black backdrop. Rendered in a typical editorial style that suits the subject matter, the result is eye-catching and evocative.

“With an unprecedented number of journalists behind bars around the world, it is more crucial than ever that we find new and creative ways of keeping their stories alive,” says Rebecca Vincent, director of campaigns at RSF. “We are so pleased to partner with Society on this innovative project, lending our voices to some of the most emblematic figures of our time, whom powerful forces have tried so hard to silence. We hope seeing their stories in print will spur the world into action to secure their releases and to stop the relentless targeting of journalists once and for all.”

The Prison Papers edition of Society is out now and can be viewed online here