Your Annual Report. Print or Digital?
/Guest post by David Low, IDO Design & Animation
Your school’s annual report is a vital piece of communication, telling the story of the year. Your school’s successes, highlighting the work of your board, leadership and parent association as well as providing financial information for the last 12 months.
It’s always a large undertaking. Sourcing photos, obtaining permission for their use for GDPR and making sure they are of a high enough resolution for print. Articles need to be written. Information needs to be gathered. It needs to be designed, artwork produced and sent to the printers with consideration of quantities and distribution to your community as well as the environmental impact of the project.
For the last two years, I was fortunate to be involved with producing a digital annual report, using Foleon as the online platform for delivery to the school’s community. The second one I produced also won an InspirED Gold Award which was lovely.
The international school of brussels’ annual report won gold in the 2021 brilliance Awards.
Of course there was still the same care and attention given to sourcing the content, but the flexibility of being able to build the report online was a very welcome change from what had gone before.
Multiple team members could review and edit the material. There was the ability to embed video and animation. We could input data and have it rendered elegantly as infographics and graphs.
“And let’s not forget the dreaded typo! ... There is invariably one which slips through the net and ends up printed indelibly... With a digital report, you can silently swoop in and squash that bug like a ninja and no one will ever know :)”
There was also much more flexibility around photography — when you have a professional photographer visit and take photos of your campus and students at work, they are of course pixel-perfect, huge images that will print beautifully.
But sometimes, that one-in-a-thousand chance pic of the moment the home team scores the winning goal or an ES student joyfully discovering creepy crawlies in the forest school, captured by a parent or a teacher on their smartphone with a lower resolution than a professional DSLR just tells the story better. Looks great online but might not stand the rigours of the print process.
And let’s not forget the dreaded typo! After multiple PDFs have been sent around to be proofread, there is invariably one which slips through the net and ends up printed indelibly, just waiting to be discovered! With a digital report, you can silently swoop in and squash that bug like a ninja and no one will ever know :)
I really enjoyed this new way of working and the freedom it brought but what are your thoughts? Do you appreciate the tactile feel of a physical publication or is digital the way forward for you?
I’d love to know what you think :)
David Low
DAVID LOW is a graphic designer and animator, based in the UK. He has 30 years graphic design experience, having worked in a variety of settings from design studios, toy manufacture, media and internet security and more recently as a freelancer. For the last 11 years he has collaborated almost exclusively with International schools and educators, leveraging a wealth of industry knowledge in print, screen and motion based design. Dave is passionate about pixels and helping schools craft a clear and consistent brand message. Away from work he enjoys running, cycling (on one and two wheels) and has recently become an award winning first-time film maker in a collaboration with David Willows. Email Dave.
