Annual Reports are usu­ally bor­ing printed num­bers to show where a com­pany stands. In this series we take a closer look at good designed annual reports, which can improve a pro­fes­sional approach and stay­ing ahead of your competition.

An annual report is a doc­u­ment a com­pany presents at Annual Gen­eral Meet­ing for approval by its share­hold­ers, or a char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion presents its trustees.

1. Fea­tured show­case: IMC Annual Report

For IMC, Fitzroy designed a unique annual report. IMC – a renowned deriv­a­tive trad­ing house with over 500 employ­ees world­wide – is an active trader in almost every stock mar­ket in the world. They con­stantly have to deal with stock exhanges’ infor­ma­tion and its ever chang­ing highs and lows.

In the annual report, this infor­ma­tion is trans­lated in a unique way by show­ing in 24 pages the 24 hours of a trad­ing day. Which stock exhange opens and which one closes; what infor­ma­tion is rel­e­vant. By using the green (increase) and red (decline) fil­ters, the data of a hec­tic trad­ing day are pushed to the back­ground, so that only IMC’s active fields (the stock mar­kets and the arrows) remain visible.

A final detail: based on GMT the stock exchanges trad­ing at night are dis­played in blue, while the ones trad­ing dur­ing the day are dis­played in yellow.

• Visit the design com­pany Fitzroy for more information.

Out of the box designs

The fol­low­ing design exam­ples are great inspi­ra­tion for out of the box thinking.

2. Agency: Kuhlmann Leavitt

This impact­ful piece cap­tures the reader with exquis­ite black and white pho­tog­ra­phy and clas­sic yet whim­si­cal typog­ra­phy cus­tomized to each shot.

• Visit the agency Kuhlmann Leav­itt for more infor­ma­tion and photos

3. Agency: Bruketa Zinic

Well Done: a food com­pany annual report that has to be cooked first. Croa­t­ian cre­ative agency Bruketa & Zinić have designed an annual report for food com­pany Podravka that has to be baked in an oven before it can be read.

• Visit the design com­pany Bruketa Zinic
• See this great full pic­tured arti­cle about this excep­tional annual report.

4. Agency: Migreyes

Unique annual report that high­lights Konami’s goal to tar­get beyond Japan.

• Visit the detailed infor­ma­tion about Konami’s Annual Report at Migreyes

5. Fel­tron

A unique lay­out and infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ing annual report from Feltron.

• Take a look at the web­site for more pho­tos and screen­shots of Feltron’s Annual Report

Sim­ply beau­ti­ful Annual Report Design

Just beau­ti­ful annual report design with great color usage, typog­ra­phy and photo use.

6. British Coun­cil Annual Report

Navig8 won in a bid against the British Council’s pres­ti­gious list of sup­pli­ers to design and print man­age their annual report.

• Visit the Navig8 web­site for more information.

7. Air­tric­ity Annual Report

Great design, cre­ative view on get­ting num­bers to look attrac­tive. The pho­tos and quotes included in this annual report are great designed.

• Take a look at the agency web­site for more information.

8. Cat­a­lyst Recruitment

Our clients will no doubt have a clearer under­stand­ing of the diver­sity of our busi­ness and spe­cial­ist areas and we would have no hes­i­ta­tion in rec­om­mend­ing Lemon­ade to other cus­tomers due to their pro­fes­sional ser­vice, fol­low through and inno­v­a­tive cre­ative design.

• Visit the web­site Lemon­ade Agency for more infor­ma­tion about this fab­u­lous annual report.

9. Agency Methodologie

Uni­var NV is one of the world’s lead­ing inde­pen­dent dis­trib­u­tors of indus­trial chem­i­cals and providers of related spe­cialty ser­vices, oper­at­ing through­out North Amer­ica and Europe. Designed by Method­olo­gie, an award win­ning design agency with a cre­ative view on annual reporting.

• Visit the web­site Method­olo­gie for more infor­ma­tion and their portfolio.

10. Fred Hutchin­son Can­cer Research Cen­ter Annual Report

This annual design is designed with many pho­tos and good typog­ra­phy usage. This seri­ous sub­ject is pre­sented in a great designed annual report.

• Visit the web­site and down­load the com­plete PDF annual report.

11. Stedelijk Museum Jaarverslag

The design Agency Deel Drie designed the annual report for Het Stedelijk museum Ams­ter­dam, with large black/white head­lines com­bined with col­or­ful pho­tos this is great work.

• Visit the web­site and down­load the com­plete annual report for Het Stedelijk Musuem.

12. Geest Annual Report

Designed by Navy­blue, the Geest annual report has won the ProShare Award for Best Annual Report for Pri­vate Investors (FTSE 500) for an unprece­dented five years in succession.

• Visit the agency web­site for more information

13. Agency Hir­shorn Zuck­er­man Design Group

Legacy’s cam­paigns are designed to engage, and this report had to do the same. That strong cover statement—“The Story of the Year”—leads the reader into a vari­ety of cam­paign voices and inti­mate por­traits backed by strong colors.

• Visit the web­site from Hir­shorn Zuck­er­man Design Group for more information.

14. Agency SamataMason

For Strate­gic Hotels and Resorts Samata­Ma­son designed a won­der­ful paper sculp­tor and the typography.

• Visit the web­site from Samata­Ma­son for more information.

15. Agency Sibley/Peteet Design Austin

For Trop­i­cal Sports­wear Sibley/Peteet Design Austin cre­ated a beau­ti­ful crafted annual report, titled “The Per­fect Pair”, the front cover com­mu­ni­cates the title on a hang tag on the back pocket of a pair of khakis.

• See the web­site for more infor­ma­tion and examples.

16. BNP Paribas Annual Report

BNP Paribas Assur­ance devel­ops and mar­kets sav­ings, pro­tec­tion and prop­erty & casu­alty insur­ance prod­ucts in 42 coun­tries under two brands, those brand are finan­cially reported in this nice designed annual report.

• Visit the web­site BNP Paribas for a full PDF ver­sion of the Annual Report 2006 and 2007.

17. The Equal­ity Authority

An attrac­tive and inno­v­a­tive doc­u­ment that reaches out and com­mu­ni­cates very effec­tively with the very diverse audi­ence we strive to serve.

• Visit the web­site for more infor­ma­tion and a full PDF download.

18. Annual Report Trans­parency Inter­na­tional 2006

Trans­parency International’s Annual Report 2006 show­cases last year’s suc­cesses for the anti-corruption move­ment, as well as inno­va­tion in mea­sure­ment tools, tar­geted advo­cacy work and sector-specific projects from TI chapters.

• Visit the web­site Trans­parency to down­load the full PDF version.

19. Over­all design tips for Annual Report Design

A well-written and designed annual report is a must to rein­force a hard won rep­u­ta­tion. Stake­hold­ers need to be assured the organ­i­sa­tion is not in the busi­ness of cut­ting cor­ners or tak­ing the easy way out

• Visit the web­site for more tips about annual report­ing design.

Worth men­tion­ing

• 20. Delta Lloyd Jaarver­slag, the com­plete annual report view­able as a web­site or to down­load from the website.
• 21. Unilever Jaarver­slag, down­load the com­plete PDF ver­sion from the website.
• 22.Koninklijke Ahold Jaarver­slag, down­load the com­plete PDF ver­sion from the Ahold web­site.
• 23.IBM Annual report­ing, avail­able from 1994 to 2007, down­load the com­plete PDF ver­sions from the web­site.
• 24. IMF Annual report, avail­able from 1996 to 2007, down­load the com­plete PDF ver­sions from the web­site.
• 25. A com­plete huide for annual reports, visit the web­site AnnualReport.com for addi­tional information.
• 26. StepIn­side, a design related web­site with top 100 company’s and annual report­ing, see the web­site for addi­tional information.

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