Your report is a story
One of the things I love to design is a report. These often-times dense documents are amazing opportunities to tell an organizations story in a way that is compelling and engaging. At there best they can be a point of pride for people within the organization and a tool to help drive engagement with board members, investors and donors.
Reports tell a story through emotive imagery, eye catching infographics and a strong connection to your brand.
The imagery you choose and how you show it in context can highlight a project, show your employees in action or focus on the results and people you impact. Showcasing the people or environment you impact can make a report instantly have a greater connection to it’s reader and highlight the points in the copy.
Infographics and icons in a report can help to simplify complex information and make it easily digestible. These types of graphics dev eloped for a report often have an even longer shelf-life and usefulness beyond the report themselves, as they can he repurposed for social posts and presentation graphics.
Working with a designer that also has a good understanding of your brand can ensure this is a piece that strengthens your brand by following and expanding on your brand guides. Sometimes when working with a brand who has outdates or less established brand guides this can be an opportunity to solidify some thinking around this as typography, imagery and infographics are developed for a report. Though I generally advocate for establishing brand first, I know this is not alwyas realistic for time-lines and budgets and have at times worked back from report design to help establish brand guidelines using some of the brand evolution done oin the report to help to establish a stronger brand.
One of the bigger considerations these days is also format of the report. Will it be print or digital? there are a number of factors that could play into this, such as brand values (sustainability), cost, and ease of distribution, and audience preference. A print piece can often be a highlight piece for a company. Print carries more emotive weight and feels more refined, especially with care to print technique and paper selection. Digital on the other hand reduces paper waste and is easy to distribute to stakeholders that are spread out. A digital report does not need to merely be a PDF of a print report though. There are many ways for do this from a web-based micro-site to an interactive PDF with links and navigation. This can help add some real functionality to your design.
