ANNUAL REPORT
History | Examples | Planning

History
Financial annual reports have been around in one form or another for hundreds of years — pretty much for as long as there have been investors interested in how their money was being managed. But in 20th century America, two events shaped annual reports as we think of them today. The first was the US Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, passed after the catastrophic stock market crash of 1929. It mandated that all publicly traded companies had to make yearly financial disclosures to their shareholders. The second defining event occured at the dawn of the 1960s when the letter press printing gave way to photo offset lithography and hot metal type gave way to photo composition. Flexible and fast, these new technologies made it affordable and possible to introduce color photography and graphic elements into corporate brochures.

Companies seized the opportunity to "piggyback" a marketing message onto the annual reports that they were required to send to tkey constituents anyway. From the 1960s forward, annual reports exploded with colorful photographs, graphic images and visual themes, and thes once-dry documents took on the personality of the individual company. Graphic design drew readers into the report, communicated corporate culture and explained management strategy in a lively, compelling way. It still does. In fact, the term "shareholders report" is kind of a misnomer, since most companies print at least two to three times more copies that they have stockholders. That suggests a distribution and use that goes far beyond financial reporting.

Each year thousands of annual reports are filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and that doesn't include the thousands more produced by nonprofits and other entities that do not have to file with the SEC. For designers, photographers, illustrators and printers, an entire industry has grown up around annual reports. Early signs of what it is today began appearing in the mid 1950s. The following examples may look dated by today's standards but each were very cutting-edge for their time. Today's annual reports have changed. There is no single design model and a lot of young designers have gone beyond being influenced by each other and are doing their own things. When they are brilliant they are amazing.

Examples

ANNUAL REPORT	YEAR	CORPORATION	DESIGNER
	1958	IBM	Paul Rand
	1958	General Dynamics	Erik Nitsche
	1959	Litton	Robert Miles Runyan
	1998	Jack in the Box	Viadesign

Planning

You need losts of skilled people doing many demanding jobs to produce a major corporation publication. Getting it all done on time - and well - takes good project management. And that demands effective scheduling, smooth information handeling and precise detail tracking. The following step-by-step guide will help you organize information in a logical, useful manner.

PHASE ONE

Client reviews, evaluates and researches information to establish overall objectives and parameters and then hires a designer.

PHASE TWO

Client meets with designer to determine theme and key objectives, discuss budget and schedule.

Designer
> Prepare overall budget estimate and production schedule
> Prepares initial concept spreads
> Select paper and have paper dummies made for clients's approval.
> Create a page-by-page distribution plan of the publication.
> Prepare initial production specifications
> Meet with client

PHASE THREE