I Love the Smell of Ink in the Morning

Around this time every year we get a well-produced hardcover book that highlights the top 100 annual reports of the past year.  It’s great to thumb through - see how our work compares to the top talent, see some really smart design and writing, see the value of well-done print work, both the work celebrated and the Graphis book itself.   It’s inspirational.  It’s newly printed, and smells good.

We had two winners in the book - a Platinum award for a Courier Annual Report, and a Silver award for a Harvard Business School annual report, and we’re grateful for that recognition.  There were interviews for the Platinum award winners that went below the surface - the client’s directive, the approach, the process, the metrics.  Anyone designing, writing or project managing annual reports would find these useful.

This year Graphis also addressed the “AR2.0″ concept, the idea of a robust online annual report with immersive, updatable content and video. They asked Mike Weymouth, our Mike, for a positioning article, and he provided one: “The Online & Print Annual Report: Carpe Diem or Carpe Diem Cras?”  Mike puts the AR 2.0 concept in the context of advances in technology, IR strategy, and real-world case studies from Life Technologies and General Electric.  He also created the photographs to accomany the article.  You can get a copy of his article here.  PDF: “The Online & Print Annual Report: Carpe Diem or Carpe Diem Cras”  Thanks to Graphis for permission to post this PDF.

And you can see excerpts from the Graphis book online.  Of course, you won’t get that new high quality print smell!  You can order the book on the Graphis site as well.