It's not about making things pretty
True story; an esteemed client came to us the other day with a sustainability report one of their consultants had written and presented to them. Let’s just say the client's feedback to the consultant wasn’t positive. I won’t quote the feedback as this is a family blog.
My job was to engage with the consultant and as my client said: ‘sort it out’.
Before I go any further the relationship I have with my client goes beyond graphic design. Navig8 has helped them with interior design, annual report structure and design as well as brand strategy and development.
So I did as I was instructed and ‘engaged’ with the consultant.
We are of course a design and marketing agency, he (we’ll call him ‘he/him’) assumed our job was to sort out the design of the report. I don’t blame him for that assumption, the report was a dog’s dinner. What he didn’t realise was that his reporting framework was the real issue. There was no structure to his content. This made what was in fact, very good intelligence – totally incomprehensible.
Given this document was a key strategic report and the audience was the board, local government and the local business community, the content needed repurposing in two major ways.
Firstly a clear overview so that the readership could quickly understand the findings and recommendations and then easily seek out the section they were interested in.
Secondly, to introduce a clear, consistent structure to the report content.
The last and easy part was sorting out the design. We had design templates on both PowerPoint and InDesign.
It wasn’t about making things pretty. Thank goodness our client recognised that.
Setting aside the prelim content, this is how I structured the client’s report:
Economic
Our goals
The actions we will take
Factors and influences that impact our success
Timeframe
KPIs or measurements for success (how it will be measured etc).
Environmental
Our goals
The actions we will take
Factors and influences that impact our success
Timeframe
KPIs or measurements for success (how it will be measured etc).
Some organisations add a section on a ‘plan for the future’
Social
Our goals
The actions we will take
Factors and influences that impact our success
Timeframe
KPIs or measurements for success (how it will be measured etc).
It doesn't take a genius to see the benefits of a structure like this. In fact, it may seem obvious. But therein lies the beauty. Its simplicity is its effectiveness.
Anyway, in the end, we redesigned it to maximise messaging – whilst making it look ‘pretty’.