Planning the Project


A lot of time goes into planning an annual report. It is a communications device whose purpose is to convey essential information about a company's performance on an annual basis. That performance would include the sales accomplishments of products or services, new initiatives, stock or valuation information, key personnel changes or additions, and any other noteworthy programs (perhaps engineering achievements, new certifications achieved, HR benefits added, and so on).

Tip

For a great reference for what is typically included in an annual report, visit Tips for Creating a Good Annual Report at http://www.zpub.com/sf/arl/arl-tips.html.


The purpose of the annual report is to review the year for stakeholders of the company. Content for this project will likely come from a variety of sources, such as internal departments, external vendors, and independent partners.

In planning the report, you will have to convey to your contributors the kind of information you will need. If the content is data, it will be particularly important that the data is valid, accurate, and in a usable format. Images and graphics should be consistent with your brand, and the report should reflect the success of your company and its accomplishments. Images as well as words should be used to convey a consistent message to your company's stakeholders.

Communicate to your contributors what kind of file formats you would like to receive. Stress that minimal formatting should be applied to this contentyou do not want to spend time stripping or undoing their formatting in an effort to apply your own. Before you begin laying out your content, the creative direction of the project should have been approved. You can create comps of some concepts for approval before content ever arrives. When the files start coming in, the layout should come together quickly.

A budget has probably been established for this project. This is generally a nice printed piece with multiple colors, formal binding, finishing features, and long document features such as credits and indexes. A four-color job on quality stock that will be mailed in a 9" x 12" envelope will contribute to the cost of the project. Special photography, language translation, and software plug-ins to handle the formatting of financial data all add to the cost and timeline of the project.

Remember that, although this project is primarily used as a device for accountability, it can also be used as a marketing tool, particularly when your company is interested in attracting investors, convincing a bank of the importance of a loan, or convincing a potential strategic partner to join forces. This is an opportunity to represent the company. For inspiration, Google "annual reports"; you will be surprised at how many sites offer libraries of annual reports you can view online or download.

Given how often throughout this book I have stressed the importance of a strong relationship with your print provider, no publication would warrant a thorough planning with your service provider more than an annual report. The run length will likely be shorter than some of your other marketing initiatives, but the planning is just as important.

Be mindful of the fact that you will convert this print publication into a PDF that can be distributed electronically. This will allow you to enrich the recipients' experience. Interactivity can be introduced into the report by using hyperlinks for navigation purposes as well as pointers to websites. Movies can be embedded such as a brief message from the CEO or chairman of the board. In addition, animation of a product demonstrating usability accomplishes a number of things, such as showing how the product works, what the product looks like, how it might be engineered, and how you are using technology to extend your message in a dynamic way.

Managing Content

This content will contain financial information, and numeric data requires some specific formatting skills. You might be dealing with multiple currency issues or need to decide how you want to abbreviate large numbers. If tabular data needs to be formatted, you might want to consider fonts with math-specific glyphs.

A decision you might want to resolve prior to content coming in is whether you will use tabs to handle your financial data or tables. Tables offer benefits such as the independence of each table cell, the ability to apply fills and strokes independently, as well as unique visual applications such as merging cells and importing images.

Consider expressing all this data in a graphical context instead of endless columns. Interpret the data for the reader using interesting graphs and charts. Adobe Illustrator is ideal for creating charts or graphs that are visually interesting and meaningful. You can add depth and dimension and impose designs onto your charts.

Your information might have to be attributed to resources or partners who will validate or certify your data, such as the company's accounting firm or stock information from the index your company's stock trades in. If this is the case, plan for footnotes in your document. If there will be a significant number of tables or charts, you can build a list that readers can use to flip to them quickly.

Additionally, a table of contents (TOC) is always useful to help readers navigate. InDesign enables you to use its TOC feature to automatically create bookmarks in your PDFs. If the annual report ends up being lengthy or contains a lot of varied information, consider using the index feature so recipients can quickly look up the information they are most interested in.

As indicated in the previous section, text will more than likely come from a variety of sources. It is important to stress to your sources that you want as little formatting as possible, so that you don't have to spend your time stripping unnecessary formatting out of the text before you can apply your own. Ask your sources to just type the text in and run a spell check. Ask them to use only one return between paragraphs. Ask them not to use spaces when they should be using tabs, and ask them not to use tabs when they should be using indents. You might choose to link your text files in InDesign as you do your image files. If the text files change or are updated over time, you can update the link in your publication to reflect the change in your layout; however, you will lose any formatting you have applied in InDesign.

Photography should be planned and shot well in advance of your deadline. It should reflect the company and its brand and should be managed at a resolution and color space consistent with your production considerations. This is one of the most formal publications you will ever produce. You might choose to work with duotones, tritones, or quadtones utilizing interesting combinations of spot colors such as metallics. Make sure the photographer understands how the images will be adjusted and produced. EPS and TIFF are typically used for continuous tone images.

If you are on a limited budget and can't afford to shoot your images, consider Adobe's new Stock Photo service located in Adobe Bridge under Favorites. This takes you to Adobe's new service, which is available on Bridge users. There you can search through images from different stock photography vendors, download comp images, and purchase high-resolution images for production. For more information, tour the Overview feature as soon as you click Adobe Stock Photos in your Favorites tab of Bridge.

If graphic elements will be used in your layout, they should also be consistent with the brand and serve a purpose, perhaps to distinguish one section of the publication from another, to distinguish one product or service from another, or used as visual navigation elements. EPS files are commonly used for illustrative graphics.

Finally, consider the pages of the publication themselves. It is unlikely you will choose a format you typically see in newsletters or magazine publishing that are three or four columns wide. Remember that this is one of the most important publications a company uses to sell stakes in the company, so it should capture the company culture and management philosophy.

Many companies prefer to express this information in a very formal format; however, if you sell novelty party items, it would be inappropriate to create a formal annual report. In this case, you should create an annual report that expresses the fun products you manufacture. The text and data might be extremely comprehensive and complicated, so don't make it difficult to read by threading the text all over the place. Do break up text-heavy pages with large, easy-to-interpret graphics.

Production Considerations

This is typically a big budget item because companies choose to spend more on this once-a-year document designed to impress and sell the company itself. I've reviewed many splendid annual reports where no expense was spared, from varied stock (think about combining a text weight and a vellum for special effect), to photography shot on location for this specific event, to unique finishing options including die cuts, foil stamping, embossing, and spot varnishes.

This isn't a publication you can afford to make mistakes witherrors in either the content or in the production could be very costly. Your print provider will assist you with the color correction for your images, and it is important that your color expectations are clearly communicated and that you have confidence in the proofing options offered by your provider.

Proofing early and often is a good rule of thumb. You, of course, will have control over content and when your project leaves you, the content should not be in question. There are many types of proofs, and design/content proofing should take place throughout the layout process. The best practice suggests a two-proof cycle, meaning two pairs of eyes, not including yours, should review the project for content accuracy prior to delivery to the print service provider. For this particular type of project it is likely you will have more than two pairs of eyes proofing, and it is also recommended that financial data be independently reviewed as well.

After the content has been approved and you have preflighted your work with the preflight and package features of InDesign CS2, you will submit your package to your print service provider with previously agreed-to files and documentation. You need to send some type of content proof that production operators can refer to when checking your pages for production repairs. How you choose to do that is between you and your printer; at the very least, you should send a black-and-white laser proof. However, a color proof or a low-resolution PDF would be even better.

Why does your service provider need a reference to process your job? Pagination and text flow are two important checks in a production workflow. Your service provider needs to ensure that this job contains the number of pages, colors, fonts, and images expected. If there is a discrepancy between what the job ticket or the content proof states and what they find in the file, they will have to stop processing the job and contact you to resolve these issues. It would be imprudent to process the job when it doesn't match the supplied descriptions.

After a file has been given to the print service provider, the file should be preflighted again. The printer will check to ensure that they can verify they have everything they need from you to process the job and validate that the quality and integrity of the project are in line with the estimate and job ticket. It's at this point that your provider might place a call to you and let you know about missing resource files or major discrepancies between the digital file and the quote or job ticket.

If the file passes preflight, it travels on to prepress where the next stepfile repair and/or preparationtakes place. Because 70% of all incoming files require work at this stage, it is highly likely that yours will as well. Although the file might pass initial preflight, work might still be necessary to ensure that the job images and prints correctly. For example, if there is insufficient bleed, prepress production operators will have to modify your page layout file to provide bleed. If there is not enough image to fill a bleed area, they will have to perform retouching to extend the image.

After the pages are corrected, the next two steps include trapping and imposition. InDesign CS2 comes with trapping presets that can be modified for specific production requirements and, though very capable, InDesign trapping pays off only in a RIP that utilizes Adobe In-Rip trapping. Your service provider will probably want to handle this production step themselves because they fully understand and appreciate the tolerances of their presses when combined with your stock and ink choices. Finally, imposition takes place and is, in part, determined by your binding choices and the number of pages and sheet size involved.

Your choices of review during these production steps might include page proofs (for content changes), contract proofs (for color corrections and approvals), and imposition proofs (if you would like to see how your pages will fold and trim). The technologies your service provider uses to deliver these types of proofs will vary. Digital proofing in conjunction with computer-to-plate systems is now a common combination found in many print service providers. If you are working with a printer who uses a film-based workflow, analog proofs such as Matchprints or Cromalins, might also be an option.

Digital proofs can be created with varying technologies, including laser, inkjet, ablation, dye sublimation, phase change, and a variety of thermal applications. For this project, it's important that your type proofs are crisp and clean, that your images accurately reflect your color correction requests, and that the overall proof accurately sets your expectations for your press check. A press check for a publication this formal is warranted and recommended.

Distribution Options

How will you get the annual report to the necessary recipients? You will undoubtedly use a carrier of your choosing, such as the U.S. Postal Service, or you might prefer an alternative carrier if there are timely delivery requirements. As I've stated throughout the book, the time to determine your distribution choices is at the beginning of the project. Deadlines, timelines, budget, and shipping requirements should be accounted for prior to laying out the project.

Senior management might want this project or some version of this project posted on the company website for public access. This version of the annual report will likely be downloaded as a PDF in a resolution suitable for laser or reasonable quality inkjet output. If you regularly distribute publications via your website, you should include a link to the Adobe website in the event the recipient doesn't have Acrobat Reader installed.

Remember, this is a requirement for opening a PDF, and although Acrobat Reader is free, you can't assume everyone has it installed on their desktops.

Now that we've discussed your options and considerations for planning an annual report, let's create a sample report so you can gain some experience!



Adobe InDesign CS2 @work. Projects You Can Use on the Job
Adobe InDesign CS2 @work: Projects You Can Use on the Job
ISBN: 067232802X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 148

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