Sand Rose Project Annual Report & Invitation

The Sand Rose Project, a Cornwall based charity offering breaks to bereaved families, commissioned me to design their open day invitation and annual report. I had previously done some amendments to their website.

I enjoyed working on these and found it to be a valuable learning experience both in terms of the design process involved and in working with clients.

It was useful to research other work of this type and forward examples to the client. Sand Rose gave me feedback on the following which allowed me to gauge the style and tone that they themselves sought.

http://www.savethechildren.org/publications/annualreports/Save_the_Children_Annual_Report-_web_2-14-08.pdf

http://www.dogstrust.org.uk/VirtualContent/111926/Dogs_Trust_Annual_Review_2007.pdf

http://www.nspcc.org.uk/documents/nspccreviewreport06.pdf_wdf39721.pdf

http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Documents/Support_Material/About_us/AnnualReviews/AnnualReport2007.pdf

They also provided an example in the form of an annual report published by See-Saw, an Oxford based children's bereavement charity.

I directed the client as to potential sections within the report and also suggested that as a people-focused charity it might be good for their public image to include photographs that show families using the facility - so far all photography supplied had been people-free.

I made a start on the design without having all of the copy. This was OK to a point, it allowed me to give the client a preliminary draft to consider quite early on but I would say that it is much easier to make design layout decisions if you have all of the copy to play with in advance. Start with the copy and build the look around it, the copy tends to govern what is possible visually - well, it does for me.

The other key learning feature surrounds the printing. It can be quite tricky to deal with a remote printer, as was the case here. It meant falling into a triangle of designer, printer and client where, due to location, the client is making key decisions about the type and quality of paper etc. This is not ideal and unless you, as a designer, have the same actual samples as the printer it becomes difficult to advise the client on these issues. It can lead to a situation where it feels like a slightly uncomfortable punt in the dark. Personally, I feel that the choice made here in each instance is not quite right. The invitation might have been lifted by a crisper whiter finish and the annual report needs to be on a slightly heavier paper. I would also liked to have considered a matter finish.

Nevertheless, I am reasonably pleased with the outcomes although in future it would be prudent to ask the printer to send samples of the potential papers.