RNIB

Seeing design differently

RNIB has a new vision: a world without barriers for blind and partially-sighted people. This leading UK charity lends practical and emotional support, provides reading services, offers life-changing products, and campaigns to change attitudes within society, communities and individuals.

THE CHALLENGE

When RNIB approached us to produce their 2018/19 report, they had quite a story to tell. After a difficult period, the charity was transforming itself through new management, a radical financial plan, and a refreshed strategy and brand. It was also celebrating a remarkable 150 years of supporting people with sight loss.

The charity wanted their annual report to be compelling, with lots to share about a fresh sense of purpose and positive results. What’s more, its new brand – See Differently – would be core to the whole project.

Our challenge was to harness this brand to produce a bold new report that reflected the important messages they had to share. We needed to restructure content, make the copy concise to allow room for better design, and bring in more graphical representations of information. 

OUR APPROACH

Working alongside RNIB, we produced a copy plan that completely ripped up the previous pagination and brought all the positive messages to the fore. 

We restructured the report and began with an overview that gave context and meaning to strategy and performance. 

At the same time, we presented the idea for an oversized but perfectly proportioned report that literally expanded our canvas. This approach made room for the bigger story, better design and improved accessibility for stakeholders both in print and online. We created new infographics to present the information in a more direct and meaningful way. We learned how to tag and link every bit of content in the report, so it could be read by screen reader technology. 

THE RESULT

This year's report comprises a completely new structure and the simple yet highly effective idea of producing an oversized document works extremely well.

We went the extra mile to deliver a document that worked successfully for all of their audiences. By encouraging RNIB to expand on the information in the report, we were also able to create more concise and powerful versions of existing sections. 

Telling the story of such an important charity was uniquely challenging and rewarding. RNIB chose to work with us because of our expertise and experience, but balancing our ideas with strict artworking and accessibility needs was a real test of our creativity and flexibility. We were really pleased with the final result, which worked for the audience while still looking as dramatic and impactful as we wanted.

- TIM MARKLEW / Account Manager and Consultant, Emperor

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