IE’s experience of serving charitable organisations means that we’re confident that we can produce highly effective annual/impact reports time and time again. It was therefore interesting to learn that the RNID have opted to publish their 2007/8 impact report online, using video and sign language. At first glance, the report certainly presents as an interesting piece of work.

Practically, this move makes a lot of sense. Electronic publication negates the need for large print runs, the cost of which can represent a sizeable chunk of any charity’s increasingly precious funds. The negligible use of paper also has significant benefits, minimising the considerable environmental impact of its production and use. Online publication also has the advantage of linking topics in the report to content stored on the organisation’s website and elsewhere on the web, therefore making the capacity to inform almost boundless.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a case for having a printed annual report that can be physically handed over to stakeholders, that can be left in receptions and public areas and that can be viewed without access to a computer. Indeed, when IE is commissioned to produce an impact report, it still remains largely down to the agency’s Design team to exceed client expectations. However, the number of requests we currently receive to explore how format could be exploited to improve an organisation’s annual report has definitely shot up. The start of 2008 saw IE’s Design and Digital teams collaborating on production of an interactive annual report for UNISON West Midlands region and this project certainly gave rise internally to some really exciting ideas in terms of innovating around the traditional print format…and of course, we’d love the opportunity to translate those concepts to reality.