A clear annual report does not happen by accident. You need a plan, a workflow, and a designer who understands how to shape information into a story your readers can follow. This guide shows you how to move from idea to finished report with a process that supports your content and your team.
A well-designed annual report is part of a company strategy to engage board members, stakeholders, potential investors, and customers for your company. Your report should explain your impact and performance in a clear and organized way. Using good design and creative storytelling are key strategies for a successful annual report.
Whether this is your first or tenth report taking on the responsibility for producing this important publication is a huge job. There is extensive planning, designing, and production that goes into a well-produced annual. A simple workflow helps you stay organized from start to finish.
Why should you bring a graphic designer into your annual report planning?
Hiring a graphic designer like Ruzow Graphics at the beginning of the process is key. Including your designer in early planning helps them translate ideas into a custom annual report strategy. A graphic designer with experience in document design, specifically annual reports and impact reports brings clarity to your process.
This route gives you a report with more engagement than a template or basic brand guideline. It also helps companies with or without an internal marketing team. Working with a designer earlier in the process leads to strong visual narratives that support your brand and guide your readers.
Here at Ruzow Graphics, we work best as an early strategic partner. Being involved early improves communication and the final outcome.
What workflow should you follow for a smooth annual report process?
A lot of organizations consider creating their annual report creation to be intimidating. It doesn’t have to be this way. A defined workflow creates structure and keeps your team aligned. Great design supports your message and helps your report connect with your audience. What follows are some foolproof tips to help you plan out an annual report that can knock their socks off!
1. Strategy
We start by meeting with your key decision-makers to clearly outline the deliverables and outcomes your company would like to benefit from their annual report. We focus on the user experience as well as the content.
2. Content Audit
Next, we work with you to review your copy, or we can loop in our writers if you need additional copyediting support. We help organize your materials in a design-friendly way as well as suggest places where visuals will enhance your content. It is this type of support that you benefit from when you include us as collaborators.
3. Design & Layout
While working with your content auditing, we start the creative process of designing page templates for the content in your annual report. This will provide you with a visual of the feel and look of the design that we can edit and adjust together. Once you’re happy with the overall design template, we flow in your content to move to the proofing stage.
4. Proofing
This stage should be more focused on design elements and any copy edits that do get missed in stage 2 of content audit. At this stage, providing edits is within the low-resolution PDF file we provide. We provide a document that outlines how to work with Adobe Reader/Acrobat and their commenting tools if you need some training.
It is important to understand, the more work editing content before the layout and design stage, the less effort needed in the proofing stage. When project fees include only a defined number of revisions, reducing back and forth with the designer will keep your budget on track without extra revision fees.
5. Printing
Our job doesn’t stop once you’ve approved the final design. We take the next step to work with your printer of choice to bring your annual report to production and ensure the print quality of your document. We also have several trusted printers we can recommend, who have printed reports for us in the past. We want to make sure that the result will be a report you’re proud to share with employees and stakeholders.
6. Distribution & Digital
Now that you have a report you are proud and happy with, it’s time to share it with the world. Working with your mail department to distribute to all stakeholders can happen in digital and print form. You will want to make sure you have it available in digital format as well. You can post it on your company website, distribute it through a company newsletter, or share the highlights on your social media platforms. You have invested so much into this that it makes sense to squeeze the most you can out of it.
Planning tips for a smooth annual report project
- Plan ahead: work up a schedule, line up the key contributors, and choose your designer.
- Sum up your year: it is great to have a theme that you can carry through your report. This would demonstrate initiatives, accomplishments, and even struggles that define your year. As your designer, I will help you reimagine your accomplishments, reinforced in your copy, photographs, graphs, tables, and infographics.
- Tackle the job of collecting content over time. As you’re writing content for your annual report, start filling a folder with photos, numbers and statements that back up your narrative.
- Digital, print or both? Know in advance if your report is intended for a larger digital or print in hand audience. Does your audience expect a dynamic and high quality printed report with all the press quality bells and whistles? Or is your budget aligned with a digital distribution model? The answer to this question will determine how to utilize the best of each platform to its best. Ruzow Graphics can deliver on both platforms.
- Give Ruzow Graphics access to the resources you have collected so they can create an engaging design. Photos help tell and highlight your story, and you can break up the text with memorable quotes and well-designed charts and graphs.
- Stock imagery can be used when your company doesn’t have enough quality images. Tasteful use of images can help highlight the trends that helped propel you to success. I will do a search to make sure your stock image has not been used in multiple places, or for companies that are not in line with your vision.
- Bring your data to life with infographics. Help your audience come away from your report with key takeaways that demonstrate your accomplishments by using data visualizations to place the numbers that matter front and center in an aesthetically pleasing way.
How to Promote and Repurpose your Annual Report to make the most out of your investment
1. Promote news and events.
Did your organization break into a new market, have a standout sales year, or lay the groundwork for years of future success? Let me know. While you’re compiling information for your report, highlight the numbers that back up your narrative and brainstorm about how this might be visualized. I can find ways to turn even the most mundane of figures into attractive displays of data.
2. Use as a pre-developed content marketing strategy.
While a print annual report is typically standard, don’t stop there. An annual report can be a great piece of content that drives website traffic and social shares and builds brand awareness when it’s distributed in a digital format. Take advantage of features you can include online or in your PDF document to make your annual report more user-friendly and engaging.
3. Engage Annual Report readers with dynamic content.
Include links to your website to elaborate on relevant services, case studies, or pages. Bake in clickable CTAs that might guide a prospective new client or investor towards the desired action. Include share links that will allow your readers to post about your report on their LinkedIn page or retweet key stats about your year. Use document navigation to allow a reader to click through the table of contents to quickly find the information they need. When your annual report lives online and in print, the opportunities for additional engagement are endless.
4. Quality design delivers a professional image.
No matter what your timeline or budget, you can always enhance your annual report with engaging design if you plan properly and know the tools at your disposal. Your annual report is a great opportunity to advance your brand and make a bold statement about your accomplishments. Don’t let it pass you by.
For 364 days your company has been making a difference for your customers, audience, supporters, investors, and communities.
Your report needs to fully encapsulate your impact, learning, growth, and development to ensure your support in the next year. As an annual report designer, we help bring your vision to life by partnering with you and your company to brainstorm on how to make your design engaging and memorable. BOOK YOUR ANNUAL REPORT CONSULTATION even before you think you are ready to make the process not only less painful but actually kinda fun.