UK heads annual report survey

UK designers come out top in a new survey on European annual reports, having worked on three of the four best-designed reports.

The Company Report report, issued annually by Peter Prowse Associates, analyses the Continent’s top 100 companies.

Best design went to Unilever, whose report was created by The Partners. Runners-up were Astra by Karlerik Lindgren in Sweden, Guinness by Radley Yeldar, and Bass by MPL. The reports were judged on layout, typography and photography.

“Many of the better reports have a direct and personal prose style, and use colour and layout in much the same way as a magazine,” says The Company Report’s editor Peter Clifton.

“The worst reports are legalistic in appearance and make little or no use of colour or photography,” he adds. The bottom five reports are German and Italian.