Overview

Centrus is a financial services group committed to sustainability, real assets and essential services. As part of Centrus attaining B Corporation certification they are required to produce an impact report to show their company's contribution to sustainability and planned improvements for the future of their operations.
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This is where we come in.
Having worked on previous projects with Centrus they came to us looking to develop and design their 2021/22 Impact Report.

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Initial Research

Before we know too much about the specifics of the project, (currently we just know it’s a report which will feature statistics) we cast a wide-net search for the most exciting examples we can find – which break the mould in the way they look or present numbers. This allows us to get a wider view document design without the restrictions of this specific problem blocking creativity.

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Analysing, Organising and Preparing Supplied Content

On receiving content from a client we go through it, breaking it down to understand the message that is being conveyed to our client's target audience vs what our client is trying to say. Once we are happy these two are aligned we can begin to organise the content to it's own page.

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Defining Content Function

To identify what proportion of the report focused on each of the 3 main goals we colour coded the function of each of the page's content to get a big picture overview of the distribution of the document's content. This approach highlighted the weighting of the document and identified where certain criteria was being met and where other areas needed bolstering.

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Style Setting

From working with Centrus before on other projects, including document design – we understood where their brand and visual identity sat in the market. However in this project the goal was more focused on producing a highly 'creative' outcome – slightly branching away from the ultra serious design in the finance market.

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Targeted Research & Creative Direction

During this stage of the design we defined the key creative choices to focus our attention on as well as concepts from other Impact Reports we could build and improve on.
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The key areas we focused on were:

1. Content Organisation
2. Data Representation & Infographic Design
3. Splash Pages
4. Visible Grid Format

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As well as these key aspects, we also keep examples seen in the research in mind which weren't particularly effective – to ensure we use these as indicators to measure our work’s success.

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The things we're trying to avoid:

1. Dense Text
2. Overload of info
3. Tricky Legibility
4. Text on image placement
5. Difficult reader pacing

To ensure we successfully fulfil this project we will focus on these key aspects to assess whether the criteria are successfully met or not. During this process we were using a second set of criteria which were 'Does it feel Centrus' and 'Does it feel creative'. Which during out first review we amended slightly. As the financial market has a keen focus on credibility the second criteria changed to 'Does it feel creative, yet credible?' This really helped us shape an end result which was as creative as possible without overstepping and loosing the credibility the market requires.
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Rough Layouts

Now we have the content organised and the criteria for success known – we flesh out each of the page layouts with the content. It is at this stage we divide up each block of text & imagery, assess what is the best way to get the message across, whilst also gauging what is a reasonable amount of content per page to not overwhelm or bore the viewer.

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Initial Design

Using our brief to make this as creative as possible as our artistic licence – we turned the challenge of presenting text/statistic dense pages into an opportunity to pull statistics and display information in a less than usual way to firstly, break the content into digestible chunks and secondly, make the design look as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

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Design Development

Here the focus turned to ensuring each infographic and statistic displayed the information in the most visually accessible and coherent way. This also included the consistency being formed between instances of shared information across multiple pages – ensuring a level of colour consistency for specific types of information.

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Final Design

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Animation

After completing the Impact Report design we produced an animation to give a teaser into the report for Centrus to use on their social platforms.

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Creative Team Credits

Mood-scape & Style Setting - Jenna Freegard

Mood-scape, Style Setting & Design - Matt Barber

Creative Direction, Design & Animation - Matthew Garrett

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