New political report design: the Manufacturing Commission

Last week I was proud to attend the launch of the new report for the Manufacturing Commission, the latest in a long series of political report design projects we’ve completed for the Parliamentary advisory group Policy Connect. The new report focusses on (as the cover says above) growing British manufacturing while making it more sustainable.

The launch of the report was held at the House of Commons – and it’s always a real thrill to go there under any circumstances, especially when we’ve worked on a document advising Members on improving policy.

A spread from ‘Industrial Evolution’, a good example of our political report design work

A spread from ‘Industrial Evolution’, a good example of our political report design work

INFORMATION GRAPHICS LEAD THE WAY

A particularly distinctive features of the report were both its length in comparison to other works of this kind (a whopping 130 pages) and the considerable number of information graphics throughout. We’ve long been a big fan of working on an information graphic, but with new boy Rob taking over this summer, we’ve been working on more than ever.

In particular these moved beyond tables and graphs to being illustrative, an approach which backs up the copy even more clearly, minimises the need for extra copy and allows their reuse elsewhere.

I’ve included a selection below which helped illustrate the report and its contents.

A full-page infographic from ‘Industrial Evolution’, a good example of our political report design work

An infographic from ‘Industrial Evolution’, a good example of our political report design work

An infographic from ‘Industrial Evolution’, a good example of our political report design work

A POLITICAL REPORT DESIGN DEBUT!

Finally, as the report was going to print, we were given the opportunity to emboss the cover typography, something that we’ve not done for a political report before. It pushes the cover graphic to become truly dynamic and completes what is a really exciting piece of print work for us.

It will be really interesting to see how the updates to the design work on this report, in particular polishing the typography and tightening up the internal grid layout system, influences our next piece of work for Policy Connect which will follow in early 2016.

More about our political report design work for Policy Connect

More about our work on business report design

You can download the report in full here