Annual Reports usually look pretty dull, only to be expected as they are legal financial documents with the first few pages outlining a companies progress for the previous twelve months. There are companies though, that are brave enough to go for something visually different, usually start-ups with their first Report, companies with few shareholders or companies who cover the youth market, like Domino’s Pizza.
I’ve five of their Reports from the eighties and they look stunning. Designed by Group 243 in Ann Arbor where Ernie Perich was the Creative Director. The one below, for 1983, used a design collage with all sorts of clever visual ideas: a handwritten President’s letter; typewritten copy with spelling mistakes and proofreader’s marks for the corrections; using Domino’s pencils for a bar chart; even though financials are sacred these pages are given a lift by combining them with still life items; using business cards for company officers.
I thought the ’83 Report was creatively brilliant and hard to top but that was until I saw the one for ’84 (see the July Archive) a beautifully made dark wood box with a set of dominoes under the slim spiral bound Report. Annual Reporter broadsheet newspaper, in six sections and in a delivery boy’s bag (unfortunately I never got the bag) told the good news for 1985. ’86 produced a school textbook on glossy paper with sectional plastic tabs. Perich+Partners produced the ’87 version, perhaps a little less exuberant than the others: a twelve inch square box with a ten inch, forty-eight page Report and under that a jigsaw puzzle of Domino’s logo made out of cardboard.
The Reports are shown above and I’ll post them over the coming months. Another company that put creativity first for their Reports was Miami’s Orange Bowl Corporation. Beautifully designed by Frank Schulwolf, you can see 1972 and ’73 in August 2011 and 1974 and ’75 in September 2011 archive.
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