Paul Pagel

A look back at my 2011 editorial-design project on youth and military service in Israel, exploring the tension between personal narratives and social structures through typography, photography and a two-part publication.

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Never Again Must Masada Fall: An Editorial Design Project (2011)

Closed dark cloth-bound book with a subtly embossed Star of David.

Hochschule Niederrhein (2007–2012)
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Communication Design
Editorial Design, Typography, Copywriting, Media Research, History of Design in Europe

Editorial Project:
“Never Again Must Masada Fall”
Youth and Military Service in Israel (2011)

A student publication exploring youth, military service and the space for individual choice in Israel, through editorial design, typography and research.
Folded white paper shell with a black Star of David, enclosing the cloth-bound book.
Closed dark cloth-bound book with a subtly embossed Star of David.
The folded information poster forms the outer shell; removing and unfolding it reveals the cloth-bound book containing the personal narratives.

I created this publication in 2011 while studying Communication Design at Hochschule Niederrhein, under the supervision of Prof. Nora Gummert Hauser. Our professor set a broader assignment: to consider the situation in the Middle East and develop a design response. This article looks back at my response to that task. The publication belongs to that moment; it offers neither a comprehensive account of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict nor a representative picture of Israeli society.

Explore the publication ↓

Open prologue spread with a sequence of black vertical shapes across the bottom.
Prologue / black vertical forms. The prologue spread, with a sequence of black vertical forms rising from the lower edge. The full-spread view shows how these forms occupy the page beneath the text, while a fine blue line crosses the open space above.

Motivation

At the time, someone close to me had been deployed to Afghanistan. Questions about military service, responsibility, and especially loss and the uncertainty of deployment had become personal. Looking back, I suspect this project was partly a way of working through my own emotions about that. Afghanistan and military service in Israel were different contexts, but that experience prompted questions I brought to the assignment: what happens when military expectations meet a young person’s plans for their own life?

These questions also connected with debates in Germany at that time. Compulsory call-ups were suspended in peacetime on 1 July 2011.1 Alongside the publication, I was exploring how selective news reporting could shape public perceptions of the Bundeswehr, looking at how a controversial video was selected and framed in media coverage.

A friend was also completing her bachelor’s thesis on humanitarian intervention, considering the UN’s failures in Rwanda and Bosnia and the role of NATO. Her argument questioned the UN’s capacity to act and favoured a stronger role for NATO. What stayed with me was the question it raised about responsibility: who is able to act, who decides, and what follows from acting or failing to act?

Against this background, I chose to focus on youth and military service in Israel. The publication’s title, “Never Again Must Masada Fall”, echoes the phrase “Masada shall not fall again”, associated with the ancient fortress and its place in modern Israeli national memory.2

Open spread with a thin outline drawing and the heading “Innerhalb”.
Innerhalb / line spread. An open spread headed “Innerhalb”, with a fine blue outline extending across largely empty pages. The full view gives the white space a physical scale and offers a quieter counterpoint to the dense black forms elsewhere.

The objective

I wanted to explore how military service could shape a young person’s sense of duty, belonging and individual freedom. The publication brought together accounts of three Israeli young adults describing their lives before, during and after service.3 I read these as three perspectives, shaped by different circumstances. It is not a portrait of an entire society. Their accounts led me to ask how much room there was to follow one’s own path when personal wishes and social expectations pulled in different directions.

Open book showing a blue photographic spread across two pages.
Blue double-page photograph. A source photograph printed in blue extends across the gutter of the open book. The full-spread composition preserves the relationship between the foreground figure, the scene beyond and the fine line running above the image. Original photograph: Justin McIntosh (2004), CC BY 2.0. Blue colour treatment: me.

Guiding idea

Through the composition, I wanted to make the “formative pressure” I read in these accounts tangible. I understood it as coming both from social expectations around service and refusal, and from the wider context of conflict and perceived threats. The design translated my reading of the material into a visual experience.4

The black areas gave that pressure a physical presence on the page. They shaped and interrupted the space around the text, suggesting conditions through which the protagonists had to find their own way.

Open publication showing a portrait printed in blue beside a black-and-white text layout.
Mor: complete spread. The Mor Elnekave spread brings the reported account, blue portrait and angular black areas into one composition. Shown across both pages, the thin blue line connects the text and image while the black forms constrain the space around them.
Original photo: Nicholas Brautlecht (2008). Original text: L. Bernhardt & N. Brautlecht (2008).
Open blue photographic spread combining a grid of photographs and text.
Blue photographic montage. The blue photographic montage combines military scenes, individual figures and moments of contact within a white grid. Showing the whole spread reveals how the varied images form a sequence while the single colour treatment holds them together. Mourning-soldier’s photograph: Eric Gaillard / Reuters (2009), via DUMMY, No. 23, Männer.

Structure of the publication

I used information from academic papers as well as journalistic field reports. These two types of material divided the publication into two physically separate documents that represented the military and society.

The first part contained the personal narratives of the three protagonists. It formed the human “core” of the publication.

A hand holds the dark cloth-bound book partly open.
Book held open. The book held partly open, with the cloth cover facing the viewer.

The second part was the “cover”: a large poster presenting information about the structure of the armed forces and military socialisation as described in the sources I used at the time.5 Core and cover were in tension with each other. To reach the personal narratives, the reader first had to remove the surrounding shell.

Unfolded text-heavy poster surrounding a central white panel with a Star of David.
Fully opened poster. The enclosing poster opened out to show its folds, dense text columns and central Star of David. The overall view makes its scale and structure legible: the quiet folded shell expands into an extensive field of information.

A selection of photographs documenting the original publication, from its physical construction and typographic details to selected interior spreads.

Select an image to enlarge it.

White folded publication cover with a black Star of David.
Closed dark cloth-bound book with a subtly embossed Star of David.
Close-up of the dark cloth cover with an embossed Star of David.
Close-up of the cloth binding, cover edges and pages.
Front view of the metal plate used to emboss the Star of David into the cloth book cover.
A hand holds the dark cloth-bound book partly open.
Title page reading “Nie wieder darf Masada fallen” in staggered black typography.
Open prologue spread with a sequence of black vertical shapes across the bottom.
Close-up of the word “Prolog” crossed by a fine blue line.
Detail of the page edge with a fine blue line and the label “Prolog 04 | 05”.
Open spread with a thin outline drawing and the heading “Innerhalb”.
Open publication showing a portrait printed in blue beside a black-and-white text layout.
Detail of an angular black text layout with a blue line.
Open book showing a blue photographic spread across two pages.
Open blue photographic spread combining a grid of photographs and text.

Footnotes

Editorial design and physical publication: Paul Pagel, 2011. The photographs shown here document that original work. The text collection includes Lutz Bernhardt’s reporting for Pressenetzwerk für Jugendthemen and Endy Hagen’s essay. Source texts and photographs remain the work of their respective authors and photographers; my design and colour treatment do not transfer those rights. Credits and source details appear in the notes below.

  1. German Bundestag, 2011: compulsory call-ups were suspended in peacetime from 1 July; conscription was not abolished. Checked for this 2026 retrospective; not documented as a source consulted in 2011.
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  2. Israel’s Masada World Heritage nomination dossier (UNESCO-hosted, printed pp. 16–17, 41) describes the phrase and its national-memory framing. This is Israel’s account. Checked for this 2026 retrospective; not documented as consulted in 2011.
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  3. Original research source: Lutz Bernhardt, “Nie wieder darf Masada fallen!”, Pressenetzwerk für Jugendthemen, saved in my Citavi collection and accessed on 30 March 2011. It contains accounts of Shachar, Mor Elnekave and Tsoof Yovel; the printed Mor passages closely follow this version, with some rearrangement. Related, differing versions are L. Bernhardt and N. Brautlecht’s “Verteidigung als moralische Pflicht,” taz, 6 June 2008, and Reportagebox.
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  4. Editorial composition, typography, black graphic areas, blue lines, colour treatment and physical publication: Paul Pagel. The source texts and photographs are the work of their respective authors and photographers. The prologue and passages on the poster draw on Endy Hagen’s “Ein echter Israeli desertiert nicht: Kriegsdienstverweigerung in Israel.” The Mor portrait matches the Reportagebox photograph credited to Nicholas Brautlecht; individual photographic credits appear in the captions. Some image sources and reproduction rights remain unresolved.
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  5. The poster’s “Mira Furman” should read Mirta Furman (1999), cited in Uta Klein, Militär und Männlichkeit in Israel, pp. 3–4. ↩︎
Paul

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