No matter what industry you’re in, tracking your progress and collecting key data is essential to driving business growth. That’s why so many organizations create annual reports — but many of those reports lack critical visual components.
Raw data is almost impossible to analyze in spreadsheet form. And with the huge quantities of big data that organizations today are compiling, this is more true than ever. That’s what makes data visualization one of the most critical tools in business today. No annual report is complete without visual representations of the data you’ve collected about growth, sales, distribution, financials, and other metrics relevant to your business.
But data visualization isn’t the only type of visual content that businesses today are including in their annual reports. From illustrations to icons to infographic-inspired layouts that are carefully arranged to tell a story, today’s best annual report designs are more dynamic than ever. Why? Because visual content communicates 60,000x faster than text. So if your customers are demanding that you speak visually, why wouldn’t you expect your employees, board members, and shareholders to do the same?
You want an annual report that helps you recognize patterns and opportunities. You want a report that will impress your bosses and other stakeholders. You want a report that they’ll remember later, and use to drive business decisions. As you can imagine, designing such a report isn’t exactly easy.
We’re here to help. In this crash course, we’ll offer up key resources for marketers, internal comms and HR professionals, business leaders, and designers. These comprise the best articles, how-tos, and examples we could find — both from Killer and from around the web. It’s everything you need to know about creating great visual annual reports, all in one place. Let’s take a look.
