Right tracks for Railtrack

Given that many of the non-institutional investors who hold shares in Railtrack are also railway enthusiasts, Stocks Austin Sice appears to be on the right lines with its design of the company’s annual report and accounts.

Published this week, the full report and its accompanying summary could well end up plastered over the wall of many a stakeholder/trainspotter.

The full report is encased in an A1 poster folded into a book jacket. The summary is also a fold-out affair – one side bearing the vital financial and company information, the other carrying the same poster image as the full report.

The image in question is a manipulated, colour-infused shot of a high-speed tilting train which should be introduced to Britain around 2002, once Railtrack has spent a great deal of money on upgrading the tracks to carry the beast.

Railtrack’s ongoing investment programme is also the inspiration behind two of the five illustrations commissioned for the report by SAS – Debbie Cook’s 4 Million a Day and Matthew Cook’s Business as Usual.

The other three are Jeremy Sancha’s A Lasting Partnership, Fletcher Sibthorp’s While the City Sleeps, and Andrew Davidson’s excellent study of a control room, Working in ‘Step’.

SAS designer Mark Bonner says that while the illustrations are reminiscent of the great railway posters of the past, they are very much modern interpretations: “They are 1997 pieces of action.”

SAS picked up the project after pitching against the incumbent Pauffley PRL, Williams & Phoa, Radley Yeldar, Sampson Tyrrell Corporate Marketing and Holmes & Marchant – all big hitters in the annual report sector.

Design: Stocks Austin Sice

Client: Railtrack