2020 Annual Report

A visually crafted journey through an unconventional year for one of the world leaders in environmental research.

I’ve worked closely with Resources for the Future (RFF) on numerous projects over the last few years, and so I was thrilled to be asked to design their 2020 annual report. After offering a couple of creative directions for the project, we moved forward with an ambitious approach that was on-brand, but full of details and flourishes that elevated the report to sit proudly as a bold piece of design in its own right.

The RFF brand has a colourful and varied palette, but for this I choose to use just two colours; red and a very dark blue. This limited approach to colour provided a striking, pared back aesthetic that conveyed a serious tone to reflect the unprecedented challenges that happened around the world throughout 2020.

The report also featured a timeline of notable moments that celebrated the researchers at RFF and highlighted key events in the year. This timeline ran through the entirety of the report – with a few entries on each page – and was brought to life with over 50 unique icons, providing lots of character and eye-catching details on every page.

We also worked with illustrator Stephan Schmitz, who contributed three wonderful pieces of artwork to the report, offering clever conceptual responses to research relating to financial markets, COVID-19 and global energy demand.

This was brought together with a clean, structured layout, a strong sense of hierarchy and large imagery to deliver a vivid and engaging exploration of RFF's work over the previous year. The dimensions of the report were kept on the smaller side and then printed on heavy, subtly textured recycled paper stock. Through all of this I aimed to ensure readers felt that the printed product in their hands was well crafted, carefully considered and high quality; just like the respected work of Resources for the Future.