Here’s How to Make Annual Reports Stand Out
Year after year, clients entrust us with one of their most important project: The annual report. These important documents provide a snapshot of successes, key updates, and activities throughout the year, giving stakeholders an overview of a client’s strategic direction and transparency around fiscal health.
Annual reports combine information from many different team members and departments. In addition to creating a beautiful, easy-to-read final product, our job is to also ensure the process goes smoothly.
Check out these tips from our communications and design staff on how to turn a major project into an easy lift:
Set expectations
- Create a shared document or folder where everyone can work together. This will help reduce conflicts in information sharing.
- Determine a publishing date and work backwards to set deadlines to keep the project on track.
- Loop in the design team from the beginning to discuss infographics and design elements. Find out their timeline and ensure you have blocked out enough time for edits.
- Decide how the report will be released. It’s important to understand if it will be for digital release, physical, or both. Digital reports may need functioning hyperlinks while a printed booklet will need to have a page count divisible by four.
Work collaboratively
- Work together to determine a theme. This theme, usually inspired by the strategic direction of the organization, will guide many parts of the report, from the opening letter to the closing “looking ahead” section.
- Review the previous year’s report and outline key information that needs updating. Identify who can secure this information and a deadline for making updates.
- Work with person who serves as a data lead to identify the impressive figures to feature. Look for metrics that tell a story related to the report’s overarching theme or key messages.
- Outline the sections or review the sections from last year, if applicable. These sections should align with key report themes and organizational messages.
- Do appropriate research and start writing! As you write, you will inevitably find information holes and need time to track down those details.
- Finalize all text and images before handing the report over to the design team to start laying it out and designing it. It can be difficult to rework sections that have already been designed.
- Be consistent with style, no matter how long the report. Setting up and maintaining tone, character styles, master pages, grids, and guidelines will ensure the final report maintains cohesion.
Annual reports come in different formats. Review three of our client’s recently published annual reports that we helped bring to life:
PYN , Ben Franklin, Innovation Space
