A few months ago, The Akanksha Foundation took a bet on me to create their annual report for 2021-22. But I didn’t want to submit another PDF that just checks off the compliance box and that no one wants to read.
So I turned all notions of a usual annual-report upside down:
A typical annual-report relays information about the year gone by. I wanted to employ emotive storytelling and so we had a real Akanksha student give the audience a tour of the year at her beloved school.
A “normal” annual report is stuffed with exhaustive details about all the events that take place in the year. However, lengthy text is difficult to digest given limited attention-span. So I pushed for sharp bite-sized content sans jargons and edited it brutally to the point that each piece included was uber-essential.
A conventional annual-report, in its vertical scroll, often contains photos to give the viewers a window into the org and its work. I wanted to offer an authentic experience of visiting an Akanksha school digitally via horizontal design. The elements and backdrops you see in the report are all re-created based on actual photos of Akanksha school & classroom and so is Dhanashree – the Akanksha student who walks you through the report (literally!).
After several doubts, content drafts, and design-challenges: we produced https://annualreport.akanksha.org/introduction
Kudos to leadership at the organization for supporting an idea as radical as Akanksha itself!
Annual-report is such a powerful communication tool to showcase the happenings of the year to all stakeholders. Why should it be boring? What are some cool annual reports you have seen lately?
