Rebranding an organisation that has some perceived problems can present opportunities and pitfalls. All brands have inherent brand equity, good or bad.
Using three diverse examples. let’s discuss the advantages of a timeline for an annual report and stakeholder communication.
Whether an organisation is young or old, a timeline is a visually engaging way of illustrating milestones in its journey. They illustrate to stakeholders how an organisation has grown, diversified and delivered key moments in their journey.
Stakeholders and potential investors are focusing more and more on sustainability, CSR (Corporate, Social, Responsibility) and ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) as part of their assessment of a company’s viability.
Organisations should seize the opportunity to showcase and implement their CSR, ESG and sustainability goals in all their corporate communications.
Typographic hierarchy is extremely important and is something that your designer will take care of when designing your publications. However, it is often the case that when we receive content from a client, it is not always obvious what is what.
Adobe’s InCopy enables editors and content generators to edit InDesign files without interfering with the design. Both parties can work on a shared file, the editors make editorial changes and these are automatically updated in the designer’s InDesign file.
Delivering and type of report can be a difficult job, but even more so; an annual report. This article briefly details the ‘hazards’ that can make life a little harder for everyone and the best practices for delivering one smoothly.
Icons, icons, icons – they are everywhere. We get requests for icons all the time; for annual reports, infographics and branding, to name a few.
This case study talks you through the NAHL annual report process and deliverables; from concept to fulfillment and the repurposing of the content into an online digital report.
Commissioning photography for a report, annual report or any publication does not need to be expensive and will deliver excellent value for years to come. With a little planning and organisation a day's photoshoot will make a massive difference to the finished product and ensure the imagery is real and relevant.
Not every organisation has a large photo library with high-quality, relevant and bespoke photography and even if they do, there is often a need to turn to a stock library to fulfill content that the in-house library cannot. That doesn't mean you have to end up using ‘too perfect’ people in unrealistic situations.
Why is the content supply and its format so important to delivering a successful and painless annual report? What can a client do to make sure the data and content is faithfully reproduced in the final publication?
Supplying content in a way that minimises misunderstandings, styling errors and omissions is extremely important to preserve the integrity of the report.
Here we go through the absolute ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’.
This may sound a little demanding from a supplier, but the message here is this, what do we need from you to make the delivery of your annual report as smooth as possible, taking away any frustration (on the client side) and making what is a difficult project a bit easier.
Corporate communication means many different things. A corporate communication asset might be a humble email, a PR campaign or an annual report. In this article, we are going to try to define what the essence of any corporate communication might be. No mean feat.
We have established that the CMYK has a smaller range of colours. So start by selecting your colours in CMYK. Get a high-quality print test sheet run, on both gloss/silk and matt/uncoated stock first. Whilst you are at it, produce a printed test sheet with all the percentage tints on it as well, it will give you a really good overview.
Bringing together a brand’s colour palette and applying them in a consistent way is one of the pillars of a strong identity. It is a big subject, here we touch on why they are important and what you might want to consider when putting a branding palette together.
Establishing a theme for an annual report delivers a far more engaging solution for stakeholders. Discovering what that theme for the year might be is part of the process we take before we begin the creative process.
During a creative round in the studio today, an interesting question came up. We had already established with the client the year’s messaging and developed themes and potential titles for the report.
The question was ‘Should the imagery/content for the cover of the report illustrate what the organisation does, who the client’s customers are or focus on what the stakeholder and investors want to see?’.
The highlights section in an annual report is arguably the highlight of the entire document itself. They can make great infographics that can be drawn out of the report and be used in presentations to give a snapshot of the year’s successes.
When you engage a branding agency, whether it is for a rebranding exercise or a new branding project, the agency should be asking you some important questions before establishing the brief.