The annual report is an important tool to present a company to the world, but what it portrays is a lot more than just financials.
The report’s color scheme, font style, photographs, charts and other illustrative aspects are all part of a company’s overall presentation, and how those elements are chosen can affect how a company is perceived by the public.
Pat Appleton, president of Malcolm Grear Designers, Inc. in Providence, said the design process for an annual report begins with a look at the company itself.
"We really just try to get to know them . . . The process evolves from there," she said.
Malcolm Grear has designed annual reports for John Hancock Financial Services, Inc. and a number of area non-profits.
Even though they’re designed to make financial concepts clearer to readers, too much of an emphasis on charts and other visual elements can prove to be confusing. The most important aspect of a design, Appleton said, is to present the material in a "clear, straightforward way."
West Warwick-based GTECH Holdings Corp. will print 20,000 copies of its annual report this year, and the company’s director of investor relations, Mary Norton, agrees with Appleton that information clearly presented is the best route.
"The most important elements of the report are an honest assessment of the company’s performance . . . a realistic assessment of the company’s future outlook, and an explanation of the company’s goals and objectives and the strategy for attaining those goals and objectives," she said.
The entire project, Norton said, takes about six months to take the book from design to press.
"It has to reflect the strategy of the company," Sandi Klinkhamer, manager, corporate communications, at Textron, said of the 140,000 reports the company will send to investors, employees and others.
"Oftentimes, it sets the tone for what has been – and what will come – throughout the year," she said. She added that the report’s photographs, taken by Mystic, Conn.-based photographer Michael Melford – portray intangible concepts like "supply chain" and "customers first" – "make the book."
Elizabeth Eckel, senior vice president of marketing at Westerly-based Washington Trust Bancorp, Inc., also said that coordinating the art and concept that goes into 14,000 copies of the bank’s annual report takes up about half of her year. The process begins in the fall, so the reports will be ready for the company’s annual meeting in April.
Washington Trust selects a different theme for its report each year, "usually based on what was hot during the year," said Eckel. Washington Trust – which is among the state’s oldest companies – won a design award from the American Bankers Association for its 2000 annual report, which celebrated the bank’s 200 birthday and included a company history, historic photographs and drawings and a timeline that linked the development of the bank to world events.
In the wake of the events of Sept. 11, the design for the bank’s 2001 report is a little more subdued, Eckel said.
"Going into 2002, we didn’t want to be bold and splashy," she said. "We wanted to be very corporate and conservative this year."
Framingham, Mass.-based TJX Companies, parent company of discount retailers T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods, chose to address Sept. 11 directly in its report. The company lost seven employees in the terror attacks. The picture on the report’s cover shows a large American flag in the atrium of TJX corporate headquarters and includes a tribute page inside.
Textron’s annual report theme for last year was "Next Steps" to reflect "the tone of the company and the tone of the country," Klinkhamer said, adding that generally, Textron strives for "not a lot of fluff. We tend to be very straightforward. We don’t look at it as much as a design exercise as a strategy exercise."
