BBA Group

Design: SAS

Photography: Liam Bailey and Lee Funnell

Printer: Westerham Press

The first thing you notice about the BBA Group annual report is its size. It’s dinky. The cut-down-A4 format immediately creates a point of difference and sets the tone for the wonderfully understated design inside.

One of the report’s main aims, according to SAS creative director David Stocks, was to show a consolidation of the fragmented areas in which the company operates. Though it is well respected in the City, BBA has a low profile elsewhere – not exactly surprisingly, as its core businesses are an odd mix of aviation services and non-woven materials. ‘BBA is a focused, hard-nosed business,’ says Stocks. ‘It simply wants to deliver results for its shareholders. So the design reflects this with an honest, clean, almost clinical feel.’

The use of close-up still life photography by Liam Bailey and Lee Funnell was an ingenious move. It meant that items as disparate as an eroded propeller blade and a polypropylene air filter could be abstracted enough to sit comfortably and stylistically together. They are sharp, crisp and powerful, many of them bleeding off the pages of the compact report.

‘Looking at [BBA’s] values, we realised that high technology plays a key role in everything they do,’ says Stocks. ‘So the document has a very contemporary feel.’ This is borne out in the metallic inks, text running on the vertical, and extensive use of caps, as well as the cutting edge photography.

The imagery and typography, developed for the report, will be continued into other areas, including stationery and the interiors of BBA’s head office.