Annual reports design is challenging, but with a little help, you might be able to generate one that boosts your company’s branding and marketing efforts.
One way to design a top annual report is to treat it like designing a website.
So here are some useful guidelines:
Good User Experience
An often overlooked factor for annual reports, the user experience while reading your report is extremely important.
Much like a website, the design of the entire experience from the start to end matters. This includes the loading speed. If you have a lot of visual elements, optimising their sizes to decrease loading time will be important for the overall experience.
Subsequently, the visual experience and data presentation must also be pleasing to the eye, which brings us to our next point…
Visually Pleasing
Aesthetics obviously play an important role in a great annual report design. That applies to both websites and annual reports.
Your colours should not clash or be overly striking, while the visual elements should attract the users’ attention to focus on the right portions. Present your chunky data in pleasant designs, icons and graphs to create a simpler read.
Simple is Good
It is important to be creative and push boundaries of design. However, there’s a difference between a creative design and a messy one. A simple and readable website is much better than a messy one filled with functions.
Similarly, for annual reports, a readable and clean design triumphs a messy and gimmicky one. Hence, keep your annual report designs coherent and legible so that all your users are able to actually read and comprehend it.
Copywriting
Aesthetics is only one part of the design – the copywriting should accentuate your designs as well.
Just like a website, the copywriting for the content, chapters and headers should compliment the design. The word choice and sentence structure should be easy to read, impactful and memorable.
Creative and strategic copywriting may not be for everyone, but if you are facing troubles or would like to enhance your copywriting, find someone who can provide a holistic design service.
Designing an annual report can be accomplished by thinking about it as designing a website. By planning and following similar thought processes and focusing on the key points, you should have an annual report out in no time.
Still unsure on how to go about designing your annual report? Approach an experienced design team to get the job done.
Table of Contents
Good User Experience
Visually Pleasing
Simple is Good
Copywriting
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