Annual Report Design: Photography
Photography plays a huge part in almost every annual report that Navig8 produces. Here we discuss how best to utilise photography, avoid cliches and make the most of what you might have to work with.
I am not going to discuss commissioning photography, there is an article dedicated to that.
Let’s start with perhaps the less exciting photographic content in the report; the board and management team.
If you are lucky, there will have been a photoshoot of the team in an informal way (reportage) and you can crop individual portraits or use one main image and use labels to annotate the image.
More often than not, there will have been a photo shoot in the distant past of board members stuffily staring at the camera with a nice 1970s marble effect backdrop.
The first thing to do is Photoshop that background out!
Now we will need to deal with the inevitable problem of a new board member joining the team.
For the purposes of this article, we are going to assume the client has no, or little budget. So we’ll assume the client isn’t prepared to get a photographer down to shoot a new set. Or even the new person.
They will say that Jenny from marketing has a new iPhone and she takes amazing photos of Hector, her dog, for Instagram.
Sometimes you have to deal with things like this and make the most of a bad situation. Maybe this article should have been titled Annual Report Design: Making the Most of a Bad Situation.
What we need here is a little art direction for Jenny. Ask her to match the style of the previous shots. Are they straight to the camera with square shoulders or are they turned slightly?
If the previous shots are just head and shoulders, then make sure the new shots include extra torso so that you can crop.
Get Jenny to see what you see.
Ask for the shots to be taken on a plain, light background, preferably white. Make sure there is no, or as little as possible, background ‘interference’. Things like pictures, windows and plants. There are not many things more annoying than having to spend hours photoshopping out a yucca tree.
Ideally, you need to shoot images in natural light, which applies to any photoshoot. Natural light and a bright sunny day make any shoot and the results, a whole lot better.
Make sure the new shots are taken as high resolution as possible and have no effects added to them. That way you can have greater control when you come to adjust them.
A professional photographer will adjust the colour ‘temperature’ and we must do the same so that the white and skin tones match what has come before.
That’s it for the board shots. Thank you, Jenny.
Again, we’ll assume the client has deep pockets, but very short arms and they do not have an extensive, bespoke photo library. As is often the case, they supply you with some low res shots from Barry’s PowerPoint presentation.
These may include such visual delights as little men entering a maze, a compass, some images of some cogs or some American people in a meeting with perfect teeth and a cappuccino.
Thanks, Baz, but no thanks.
If you have to rely on stock photography avoid those cheesy shots. Look for crops that change the nature of the image. If you have a shot of three people high-fiving, crop it into one subject. Try to get some commonality across the range. Which, frankly, is near impossible, unless…
Unless you do a graphic treatment to the images. This approach will instantly bring into line, a myriad of photographic styles and make them visually impactful.
The graphic treatments available are many; here’s a few:
Duotone
Cutouts
Gradient and vignettes
Graphic shapes and overlays.
There is a lot to experiment with, and these solutions, if on brand, sidestep this issue of poor imagery and turn them into a powerful, cohesive set of images.
A note on image selection. Whilst a picture of a polar bear may seem an appealing choice for your ESG report, the prosaic image of the lone bear on a sliver of ice has little to do with a UK-based fintech bank’s environmental impact.
Taking the example of ESG, whether a section within an annual report or as a stand-alone ESG report, choosing a set of images that illustrates environmental issues relating to the company, requires a little more creative thought.
As an example, one of the ESG goals might be a reduction in water use. The company’s policy might be twofold; reduce water usage in the manufacturing process as well as staff/company use.
This approach opens up a more illustrative, less generic image selection. The hurdle that you will need to overcome is that the imagery needs to be generic enough, not industry-specific. There is no way you will find an industry-specific image that matches your client’s specific water use in their manufacturing process.
You’ve got to make the best of a bad situation.