Your company's annual report is likely one of the highlights of your brand portfolio. You want it to stand out, command attention and sing to your audience. With that in mind, I wanted to outline some ideas on how to make the most of this vital publication, especially considering your digital options.
I'll start with the obvious. First, looking at the cover, make sure it properly reflects your overall company image and helps to further your branding with corporate logos and colors. If creating a digital annual report, you might have the logo rotate or slide in from the outside or add a bit of sparkle if that suits your image. If you've included photographs, you might have one of a series be a slideshow to add movement and depth. With your graphic elements you might include an animation that shows growth and development over time. Consider your most successful advertising campaigns during the previous year to help with the look and feel of this year's report.
Within the first few pages of an annual report there is typically a letter or a statement from the CEO. This is a prime spot, if nowhere else, to add video or audio. Be sure to keep the quality high on video or audio of a corporate personality. The quality of your media needs to match the clean lines of a well designed document and may require professional recording and editing.
If you include a section on the history of the company, photos with quote captions are a nice touch. Take storytelling one step further with memories or testimonials as audio recordings from key members of your team or from satisfied clients. (Don't forget media can be repurposed from/to your website, radio spots or television advertising as long as it's appropriate quality.) Be aware of not overusing media and choose the usage that will give the best impression and highest impact.
When highlighting services and products, use plenty of space around and between items. You can have items fade in slowly and one at a time to bring attention to lists. Put your newest developments in a bold color and add photography, illustration or video to demonstrate new product lines. With new trends and financial summaries make the charts come alive by animating and building the sections. Use graphic elements to spice up information (a globe to highlight geographic data or a pertinent faded photograph behind a bold chart.) Create "zones" in the report for certain types of information or repetitive information - set aside a page area for graphs or allow photos with captions to run vertically alongside more mundane text. Make use of interesting folds to pop out some items on a wider page. This can be done either in print or digitally.
Supporting documents are often added to the back of the annual report. Set the pages off with a slight color or spacial change. With a digital report, lists of officers or directors can have live email links for contact if desired, and lists of divisions or affiliates can include live web links for further exposure. Some annual reports include a glossary of terms in the back if needed, with the jargon from their particular industry - with a digital annual report, consider using pop-up explanations that can appear when the terms are hovered over with the mouse.
These are some of the main options that come to my mind for creating a formal but interactive and aesthetic annual report. I welcome comments with more design and usage ideas and I will continue adding to this entry as I find inspiring reports.