The quality of an annual report is often determined before the first page is designed. Clear objectives, agreed responsibilities and a well-defined narrative reduce revisions, improve decision-making and produce a stronger final report.

The annual report planning process

When designing an annual report, it’s essential to consider your messaging, goals and objectives from the outset. Taking time to map out these elements will save hours in the long run.

The following stages are essential to the process of planning an effective annual report…

1. Define objectives

Start your planning process by considering what a successful reporting campaign would look like for your business. This could be more downloads of the report than in previous years, an increased reaction on social media, or more coverage in the national press. These metrics don’t all need to be related to communication. They can also be strategic. A successful annual report might aim to strengthen investor confidence, support a fundraising campaign, demonstrate ESG progress, improve employee engagement or reinforce your organisation’s brand, for example.

Although the definition of success may vary from one company to another, meeting the needs of investors and employees is likely to be a key goal. Armed with this knowledge, you should be able to define clear, achievable objectives that are easy to measure.

At this early stage, it is often advisable to involve key stakeholders in order to gain their buy-in to your vision for the report. As well as ensuring alignment down the line, their input can also help to plan for all essential content from the outset.

Next steps:

❒ Define a set of clear, actionable objectives
❒ Involve stakeholders to gain buy-in
❒ Plan the core content requirements

2. Understand your audience

As with all writing, understanding who your reader is will determine everything that follows. Often, this will be a diverse collection of demographics, ranging from inside and outside your own organisation.

• Investors and shareholders are often the primary audience, using a combination of detailed financial information and your company’s goals and objectives to evaluate performance and make informed decisions about their investment.
• Regulators will review public companies’ disclosures to ensure legal compliance.
• Customers and potential clients will sometimes review your report to inform themselves and benchmark your business against competitors when making a purchasing decision.
• Employees are sometimes an under-considered yet important audience, as they’ll want to know about the company’s direction, its values and strategic focus areas.

Understanding your audience early will also help determine the most appropriate format for your report, whether that’s print, an interactive PDF or a dedicated microsite.

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Choosing the best format for your annual report

3. Develop the golden thread

Just like a newspaper or magazine, annual reports should have a strong editorial proposition. The strongest annual reports have one central narrative that runs consistently from the opening pages to the financial statements. At JDJ Creative, we refer to this as the “golden thread”.

Examples include:

• Impact at scale through a One Team approach
• Hope, Help, Happiness
• Responsible innovation for lifecycle impact

You want to tell a compelling story that covers different aspects of your company’s success. Your annual report should be a creative expression of your key messages, goals and strategy. Good design can help the reader access these key messages quickly and easily. What do your stakeholders want to read? What do they look at first? Most readers initially scan the financial highlights and the first few paragraphs of the statements made by your chairman and CEO, so it is important that these make a powerful, positive impact.

Will the report be printed or take the form of an interactive web page? Or both? This decision will influence the report’s design, which needs to ensure a strong user experience. It will also help with budgeting and finalising timeframes for delivery.

Next steps:

❒ Agree the central narrative
❒ Set budget and timeline
❒ Decide on report format
❒ Identify key content owners

4. Plan content early

Like with anything in life, the well-known adage rings true: ‘fail to prepare, prepare to fail’.

By beginning the planning stage early, you’ll avoid a last-minute rush, which can lead to mistakes and stress. Planning the narrative early means you’ll know which content to collect from which teams, allowing a copywriter (or the team members writing the report) plenty of time to craft the message. This can be a lengthy process and always takes longer than you think, so make sure to factor this in.

Setting clear deadlines, such as having a draft ready for internal review before it goes to the auditors, will ensure everyone is working towards the same timeline. And from a design perspective, the more time given to your chosen design team, the more bespoke they’ll be able to make your finished report.

Other tasks that often take longer than expected include scheduling interviews (the executive team often has busy diaries), photoshoots (getting lots of people in the same place at the same time is a logistics nightmare!), approvals (having to go through multiple stakeholders can cause a lot of discussion).

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Planning your first report? Read our Annual Report Examples 2025

5. Develop a creative brief

A creative brief will pull all your planning together into one document, which outlines the creative approach and deliverables for the whole report campaign. Once decided, it can be shared with design agencies as part of the tender process.

A good creative brief should include:

• Background to your company, including:
  • Industry
  • Market (including competitors)
  • Identity and values
• Project overview, including:
  • The work that is needed
  • The main target audiences
  • The purpose/goals of the report
  • Timelines
  • Budget
• Specific project deliverables
• Summary of brief

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Inspiration & Best Practices for designing an annual report cover