What an annual report design agency wants from you, Part 2: Content
Why is the content supply and its format so important to delivering a successful and painless annual report? What can a client do to make sure the data and content is faithfully reproduced in the final publication?
Supplying content in a way that minimises misunderstandings, styling errors and omissions is extremely important to preserve the integrity of the report.
Here we go through the absolute ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’.
Supplying content
Supply the content in one go and all at the same time. Drip feeding content in bits over email is a recipe for disaster. Only send content when it is complete. Once sent, we are likely to start work immediately, so if new content is resupplied the following day (or even in a few hours!) we may have started work.
If you are working with us, Navig8, you will most likely get an email confirming that we will proceed with the content supplied to date. Resupplying new content almost always means additional work at an additional cost.
Dropbox and Google Drive are all well and good, however, if a new file or an amended file is uploaded to the drive, we have no way of knowing; we get no alerts.
The best way is to send everything together, in one go, using wetransfer.com. It’s free and if we can make one download, in one instance, there is no room for confusion.
Supplying text
If you supply the text for your report following these guidelines, it will minimise errors, save you time having to mark revisions and a proof will be delivered faster.
Supply the text in a Word document, in the order it will appear in the report. Don’t forget the front and back cover text and inside cover text.
Include a contents page, but note that the page numbers will almost undoubtedly change.
Use proper styles in Word, ie. Headline, subhead, bullet point etc. This does two things, firstly when we bring the content in, we can auto style and change all the subheads, for instance, into the report styles automatically. This saves a massive amount of time. Secondly, by doing it this way it establishes a clear typographic hierarchy. Often, it is not clear what a subhead or a sub-subhead is, if the document is not set up properly.
Use the footnotes function, instead of just writing a footnote in the body of the document. When the text is flowed in, the footnotes will stay ‘linked’ to the text. This avoids footnotes ending up on the wrong page.
It should be noted that sometimes the small superscript numbers in the text that link to the footnotes in the body copy can alter their size back to a normal character, or even disappear altogether. So care when checking the first proof is advised; it’s something to look out for.
If you want to include notes for the designer, do this in the comments function.
If you embed a diagram or chart, say from a PowerPoint presentation, you will need to provide the ‘live’, editable text and data. The last thing you want is a designer typing in content!
Do not embed images in the Word file, supply these separately, as single, high resolution files.
Indicate where a specific image goes (or image instruction) using notes. Don’t forget the caption (if required) and photo credit. The note should read something like this: ‘Image file name: Caption: XYZ, Credit: @Jane Smith’.
It is a very good idea to have the text proofread before supplying it to the designer.
Data supply
All the data for all charts and diagrams should be supplied in Excel or copied into Word. Do not supply data that you do not want to include in the report. Asking a designer to search through a dataset to extract what you want will likely result in the wrong result.
Don’t forget to include the title of the charts and any key or legend.
The financial statements can be supplied in Word, as pasted tables or in Excel. Again, only include the data you want to include in the report and in the correct order you want it to appear.
Ensure there is consistent and clear styling of the financial data. We will need to know what a section heading is, a subheading in the data set and what the totals and subtotals are. It may be clear and obvious to the accounts team, but it is unlikely to be clear to the design team.
Photography and logos
Supply all photographs in high resolution, typically the file size should be more than 1MB, or for an image to be used as a full page, the file size should be more like 3mb and upwards.
Even if your publication is only going to be published digitally, high quality images are very important and make the biggest difference to the visual output of the report.
Review the quality of the images. Poor lighting, ‘homespun’ photographs taken on a phone can be visually unappealing and will have a negative effect on the final report.
Send the photographs as individual files.
When supplying logos, send vector files. These are scalable high quality files, formats include: .ai, .eps and .svg.
Logo files that have been searched on the internet or extracted from other programmes like PowerPoint are unlikely to be of sufficient quality, so avoid .gif, .png and .jpeg. These files are pixel based so they are very limited in the way they can be used and will lose quality when scaled (becoming pixelated) and can only be used on a white background.
Following these guidelines will make for a smoother, faster and more complete proof. It will reduce errors, lighten any potential misunderstandings and make what can be a difficult project, a whole lot less painful.