An annual report is an amazing document. Well, it CAN be an amazing document. It’s an opportunity to re-visit your organisation’s achievements and celebrate everyone who made those achievements possible. A good annual report pinpoints and documents crucial learnings and paints an inspiring picture of the future.
A good annual report tells a story that gets readers on board and committed to what the organisation does.
When I was Communications Manager at the Inspire Foundation (an Australian non-profit working in the field of mental health) the Annual Report was one of my biggest projects each year. Not only was it a huge amount of work collecting and structuring the content, but it was also a really important tool for the fund-raising team to use as they worked to retain existing funders and convince new ones to invest.
At that time, I commissioned photographers and graphic designers to visualise data and make the words look good. It was always amazing to see my boring Word documents transformed to something bright, beautiful and inspiring.
Fast forward a decade and a half, and I am sitting on the other side of the table. Although I still do some copywriting, my main stream of work is as a graphic designer and increasingly, illustrator. Now it is my job to take your boring Word documents and make them beautiful! (Just joking, they are not really boring, they just LOOK boring.)
So, what are the key elements of an annual report?
- A compelling narrative or theme
- A letter from leadership (e.g., CEO, Executive Director)
- Financial summaries and transparent data
- Testimonials or stories from beneficiaries/clients
- An expression of gratitude to the people involved
- A vision for the coming year
- A clear call to action
You probably know all of this, you are a communications professional, after all! But once you have written all the words, gathered all the data, put all the photos in named folders… what then?
That is when you need a graphic designer to work their magic.
Most people, whether they know it or not, respond better to information that has visual elements in it. Dense blocks of text tend to exhaust us before we have even begun. (There are exceptions to this, and I know one of them personally, but they are few and far between!) Graphs, data visualisations and icons really help us to take in information at a glance and convince us to make the effort to read on.
When it comes to visuals, you want them to be:
- Unique: no stock photos
- Supportive of your branding and visual identity: the right colours, the right look and feel
- Gorgeous! This is a matter of personal taste, but I love images with a human touch, even more so in this age of AI.
- Integrated: they serve a purpose in your storytelling rather than just being decorative. (Although some brands require decorative elements!)
The images below show the power of simple hand-drawn portraits in an annual report.
A few things to think about:
The clearer you are about the style and structure you want, the easier it is for me to make it happen. And easier = cheaper. (I am going to write a lot more about this in an upcoming blog post on the purpose of a creative brief.)
You might not have all documents ready at the same time. It is ok to deliver most of the content and say “There will be a 300 word letter from the CEO, save a spot for it”
Make sure you have proof-read your documents, and that whoever is signing off on them has proof-read them too. Edits are possible after the information has been put into InDesign, but it is quicker and easier for you to do them before delivering the content to me.
Annual report season is coming up. I tend to have time for two reports per month, so book yours in as soon as possible so you can relax and concentrate on other things.
If you aren’t ready to book in a project, but what to stay in touch, consider signing up for my newsletter. I send it out once a month and I won’t share your information with anyone, ever!
