An annual report explains how the organisation performed over the year, mainly to shareholders, lenders and regulators. A sustainability report explains how it affects people and the environment, to a wider and more varied audience. They can share a visual style, but the content, the data and the production process are different jobs.
Two documents, two kinds of reader
The annual report
The annual report looks back over twelve months and accounts for them. Its core readers are people with money or responsibility tied to the organisation: shareholders, board members, banks, auditors, regulators, and in the case of a non-profit, donors and trustees.
So the design has to serve two speeds of reading. The front half tells the story of the year in a way that can be taken in over a coffee. The back half presents audited figures with complete accuracy and no decoration at all.
The sustainability report
The sustainability report has a looser brief and a broader readership: customers with supplier questionnaires to fill in, employees and job applicants, investors with environmental and social criteria, community groups, and sometimes government bodies. It covers topics such as energy and water use, emissions, waste, workforce, health and safety, supply chain, governance and community work.
Most of these readers are looking for one topic. A procurement manager wants your safety record; a graduate wants to know about training. The design job is mostly a navigation job: help each person find their section and understand it without reading the rest.
The two jobs side by side
| Annual report | Sustainability report | |
|---|---|---|
| Main purpose | Account for the year’s performance | Show impact on people and environment, and progress against commitments |
| Main readers | Shareholders, lenders, board, regulators | Customers, staff, investors, community, authorities |
| Who owns it internally | Finance and the company secretary | A sustainability lead, with input from many departments |
| Core data | Audited financial statements | Operational data collected from sites and teams |
| Typical structure | Narrative front section, financials at the back | Chapters by topic, with an index of disclosures |
| Hardest design task | Long, accurate financial tables | Making mixed data comparable and easy to find |
What you need to supply
Design cannot start properly until content exists, and most delays on reports come from content that arrives late or in pieces. The two reports ask for different things.
For an annual report, expect to hand over:
- The chairman’s and chief executive’s statements, approved
- A review of operations by division or business line
- Highlights of the year: the handful of numbers you most want remembered
- Board and management names, titles, photographs and short biographies
- The governance section
- The audited financial statements and notes, as an editable file and never a scan
- Photography from the year
For a sustainability report, the list is longer and involves more people:
- The list of topics you are reporting on, and why those were chosen
- Data for each topic, ideally for the current year and two or three earlier ones
- Targets, and an honest statement of progress against each
- Short case stories from sites or teams, with photographs taken on location
- Policies you refer to, or links to them
- The index or table required by whichever reporting framework you follow
- Any statement from an external assurance provider
Which framework applies to you, what it requires and when a report is due are questions for your auditors, advisers or the relevant authority. A design studio lays the content out; it should not be deciding what you disclose. Our annual report design checklist goes through the content side in more detail.
How the data is visualised
Annual report data is financial and familiar. Revenue, profit, assets and dividends are all money over time, and readers know how to read them. A small set of chart types does the work: bars for comparing years, lines for trends, a simple breakdown by segment. The financial statements themselves are tables, and the craft lies in typography. Figures aligned on the decimal, consistent brackets for negatives, clear totals, and page breaks that never separate a heading from its table.
Sustainability data is a mixture. You might have kilowatt-hours, cubic metres of water, tonnes of waste, training hours, injury rates and the share of women in management, all in one chapter. Each has a different unit and a different idea of what “good” looks like. Lower is better for emissions, higher is better for training.
A few rules we apply to that kind of data:
- State the unit and the year on every chart, even when it feels repetitive.
- Show the target on the same chart as the result, so progress is visible at a glance.
- Use one chart style per type of data across the whole report.
- Keep icons for navigation and do not use them to replace numbers.
- Avoid green leaves, globes and cupped hands. Readers have seen them often enough to distrust them.
- Put the full data tables in an appendix for the specialists who want them.
A sustainability report also earns trust by showing the misses as plainly as the gains, so give a missed target the same size and weight as an achieved one.
One document or two
There are three common arrangements, and none is right for everyone.
Two separate reports. This suits organisations where different teams own each document and the timing of the data differs. Each report can speak to its own readers at its own length. Ask for a shared grid, typeface and colour system so they look like a pair.
One combined report. Financial and non-financial performance sit in one document, usually with sustainability as a substantial chapter. It also means one deadline for everything, so the slowest data set holds up the whole book.
A full annual report with a short sustainability summary. A few pages in the annual report cover the headline numbers and point to a fuller standalone report published later. This is a practical choice for an organisation producing its first sustainability report.
The production timeline, in stages
How long a report takes depends on its length, the number of languages and how quickly approvals come back, so we plan in stages instead of promising a fixed number of weeks at the outset.
- Brief and page plan. Agree the audience, the page count, the languages and a flat plan showing what goes on every spread.
- Concept. The cover, the theme of the year and three or four sample spreads, including one data page and one financial table.
- Narrative layout. The front sections are laid out with approved text and photography.
- Data and charts. Charts are drawn from your spreadsheets. Supply numbers in cells and not as pictures of charts.
- Financials or data appendix. Set last, because these figures are the last to be signed off.
- Arabic version. If the report is bilingual, the Arabic is laid out once the English text is frozen. See our guide to Arabic and English document design.
- Proofing rounds. One person on your side collects all comments into a single marked-up PDF for each round.
- Final files. A screen PDF with bookmarks and working links, and a print-ready PDF for your printer.
The sustainability report tends to stall at stage four, waiting for site data. The annual report tends to stall at stage five, waiting for the auditors. Plan for both by leaving space in the layout for the late material.
Company Profile Design Agency, part of HelloPixels, handles annual report design in Dubai alongside our other design services. We supply print-ready files and do not print. Quotes are given in AED after a brief, so the simplest next step is to tell us your page count and languages.
Frequently asked questions
Should the same designer handle both reports?
It usually helps. One studio can build a shared grid, typeface and chart style, so the two documents look related and the second one is quicker to produce. If you use two studios, give both the same brand guidelines and share the first report’s chart styles with the second team before they begin.
When should we bring the designer in?
Earlier than feels necessary. The page plan and concept can be agreed while your figures are still being finalised, and photography can be commissioned during the year instead of in a rush at the end. That leaves only the late data to drop in once it is signed off. Check your own filing or publication date with your advisers and work backwards from it.
What format should we send the financial statements in?
Send an editable spreadsheet or word-processing file exported from your finance system, and send the signed PDF alongside it for reference. Tables retyped from a scan are slow to produce and invite errors. Once the financials are laid out, your finance team should check every figure against the signed version before approval.