Digital Annual Report
The days of printing thousands of copies of a printed annual report seem to be over. And that’s a good thing. So whilst we are all going digital with our annual reports, we need to rethink what formats we deliver them in and what that means for the readership.
We still get requests to design an A4, portrait PDF as a solution for publishing a digital report. It does do the job, but it is what we call a ‘legacy format’, a format designed for printing and ‘forced’ to be digital.
This format does have the benefit of being printed locally and it has to be recognised that some users will want to print a report and read it in bed with their hot chocolate.
However, this format does not lend itself to online reading, so here I’ll discuss the steps we as designers can take to make the online reading a better experience.
The first step could be as simple as making the A4 page landscape. This makes viewing on your phone or on a desktop easier to read (like PowerPoint). But the grid and structure of the document will need to change. No more two columns of text as that increases scrolling up and down; single column is the order of the day. With that comes the issue of line length, too long and the text loses legibility.
The next step is to introduce interactivity. Make sure the contents and internal and external links are ‘live’ so that people can click on a link and navigate the PDF as you would a website.
To produce a truly digital annual report, you need to take it online. And I don’t mean just publishing a PDF online, I mean building an online annual report, as a microsite or a one page annual report.
There are benefits and disadvantages with online digital reporting. They are perfect solutions when creating a summary of the main report and then linking it to a full PDF download. But in terms of presenting a full set of financial statements and everything that goes with that, they do not lend themselves to large sections of text and tables.. For instance, all the risk assessment, KPIs and section 172 compliance can make it very difficult and overwhelming to navigate.
What online reports, in a truly digital format will do well, is bring the content alive. We can animate data, signpost to a video or even social media. Our build will be responsive and add a layer of interactivity that a PDF just cannot deliver.
As things stand, there is a middle ground with digital annual reports, but as we move to a more online approach, every organisation should be reviewing their requirements and seeking advice from their design agencies to deliver the best experience for their stakeholders.
There is a process and a number of considerations you, your design team and your IT department will need to consider. You can read about what needs to be done, in this article: Annual Report Microsite Process.