Annual reports provide readers with an inside look at an organization’s performance over the past year. It presents complex data as a polished document filled with compelling text, enticing graphics, and engaging photography.

Each of these elements tells the story of the company’s employees, its financial health, and the business challenges it overcame.

Annual Reports for Diverse Audiences

So who reads annual reports? According to one study, investors and analysts make up almost 33% of readers. But they aren’t the only ones with an interest in the company’s accomplishments. Employees, job applicants, customers, and sustainability experts represent over 52% of readers.

Now with most companies disseminating their annual reports digitally, they serve as a significant traffic driver.

How much?

Within the first year of an online report’s release, companies receive, on average, 35,000 visits to their websites. Uncoincidentally, annual report downloads increase due to both positive and negative developments within the company.

Annual reports present people with a condensed view of the company’s activities and make it easy to discover its most important financial and operational information.

So let’s go through some of the essentials needed to create an effective annual report design.

Talk About Your Company’s Initiatives

Writing an annual report typically involves long hours of gathering information, interviewing resources, and wrangling major stakeholders to provide quotes. In the end, each of these pieces comes together to reflect the company’s goals and initiatives.

Vivid storytelling provides readers with an inspiring view into the inner workings of your company. You can use it to tell a powerful story, as in the case of CARE’s 2020 annual report. It features stories of those helped by the non-profit organization and their life-saving initiatives during the pandemic.

As one of the largest technology companies in the world, Sony’s digital annual report takes readers on a journey. They put their values front and center, highlighting how each team does its part to produce better products.

When writing your own annual report, it needs to be distinctive. It’s a forward-looking statement that tells the story of the business, its brands, and the people who make it come together.

Highlight Metrics Using Data Visualization

Investors aren’t the only ones poring through annual reports. People who aren’t versed in the finer details of financial statements may benefit from having a high-level view of this information.

Data visualizations condense and simplify complex figures. They enable you to produce visually appealing graphics to make lists of numbers, statistics, and other metrics scannable and easily understood.

But don’t feel limited to using only line graphs and pie charts.

Illustrated icons and other infographic design elements can add character to your visualizations. Gradients allow you to play with color to give graphics more depth. And speaking of depth, a combination of 2D and 3D design gives viewers a vivid view of the data you’re displaying.

Use Fonts to Create a Hierarchy

The principles of typography can be intimidating when you get into the nitty-gritty details. Leading, kerning, ascender, descender — it’s a bit much if you’re not a graphic designer. Luckily, there are only a few rules to keep in mind to safeguard your annual report’s design.

Think of your brand’s fonts as part of the layout. They create a hierarchy to give your report structure and lead the reader’s eye through it.

Keep font sizes, colors, and styles consistent between your headers, subheads, and body copy. Paying attention to these details will give your annual report a cohesive look.

Make a Plan for Company Imagery

Whether your company just experienced an acquisition or went through a global upheaval, annual reports would benefit from having a theme. Themes guide your copy and help you plan which images to use.

Most reports adopt a combination of professional, staged photography and candid moments to present a personable and authentic company.

White Space is Your Friend

Annual reports contain a lot of information—especially for those in the Fortune 500 club. This data and text can quickly lead to a cluttered document if it’s not organized with the reader in mind.

One way to counter this is to block out the report’s design first. Setting up placeholders for images, text, and other graphic elements gives people working on the doc a sense of how the information should lay out. It’s also a way to provide the report’s contributors with an idea of how much they need to write for their part.

Design an Annual Report Worth Reading

Annual reports are a tool for companies to help investors, future employees, and the media, among others, understand the state of your business. They give readers insight into the journey your organization took over the year. By utilizing these tips, you’re well on your way to creating a report people will want to read cover to cover.