General 4 — Annual Reporting

There’s undoubtedly an irrevocable shift to digital solutions.

Switch to a screen-friendly landscape format. This trend has now reached tipping point and most of our reports today are in this format. But there are other ramifications to this core decision:
Larger point size. Viewing monitor sizes vary and while it’s not practical to cater for smartphone viewing, we do need to ensure easy readability for everyday laptops which tend to start at around 13 inches. This means choosing fonts and point sizes which are highly legible when viewed on such devices. This inevitably results in designing for fewer words per page and thus writing more succinctly in order to keep page count under control.
Single pages. When designing for print, the default mindset was to think in double page spreads. Now it is important to ensure that closely associated thoughts that may have had the luxury of a spread to capture, now only have one page to achieve the same objective. Combine that with a lower word count per page and the succinctness challenge doubles. This applies as much to associating immersive imagery as it does to associating complete storytelling.
Page dimensions. A purist view of online viewing would perhaps suggest a 16:9 proportion. However, most reports do also require a print version no matter how small a run, and of course, many readers do like to print out some or all pages for reading offline. For both purposes, A4 is clearly the most practical.

Adobe’s Publish Online enables some limited but effective animation which can add interest and enhance communication – such as simple movement, fading or sequenced reveals.

Examples of Insight Creative’s screen-friendly reports:

Adding click-through navigation opens a range of opportunities for a vastly enhanced communication experience.
Seamless navigation. Comprehensive internal hyperlinking is one of the superpowers of digital delivery. It makes your Contents page an interactive portal to every part of your report. And with a link back to your Contents page from every page of the report, a reader can very rapidly flick back to the Contents and from there to any other section of the report. You can take that principle further still by listing the main chapters on every page.
Easy cross-referencing.
You can go much further – you can cross-link from anywhere to anywhere. And if you’re producing an Integrated Report, this can very practically help deliver on <IR>’s connectivity principle.

For many years, a dedicated website was seen as the natural digital evolution of the annual report, often thought of as a microsite that lived within the company’s broader corporate site. That solution has gradually given way to the above variations of the PDF. The reasons for that are many: it is an expensive replication of any required print (or printable) version with an ROI which doesn’t stand scrutiny; the additional work involved in replicating a print document’s content in HTML; and the time to undertake that replication – you can’t effectively start until the content of the print version is completely signed off, and almost without exception that means missing legal profit announcement deadlines.
For these reasons, we no longer recommend this route. However, headline messages can be added to the Investor pages of your website which are backed by the provision of your PDF (enhanced in whatever way you have chosen).

This is the second superpower afforded by digital delivery.
Breaking out of the constraints of the page itself is a game-changer. So much comes to life when, at a single click, a video start playing on the page (with ability to enlarge and fill the screen if desired). Have your Chair or CEO speak directly to your readers. Show your assets or team members in action or your sustainability initiatives impacting. Demonstrate the reality of your case studies. Easy access on-page video adds another dimension entirely to the engagement potential of your report.
Genesis 2024 Integrated Report