Annual Report Design
Beyond being a statutory requirement, an annual report is an opportunity to offer readers an inside glimpse at your brand. With Lime’s annual report design services, your report will tell an engaging story about your business’s successes, challenges, vision and culture — ensuring that investors, analysts, and current or future team members are all left feeling impressed rather than indifferent.
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What businesses must publish / file annual reports in Australia?
In Australia, the three compulsory sections of an annual report are the financial report, the auditor’s report, and the director’s report. Companies are required to lodge financial reports with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), as specified under Section 292 of the Corporations Act 2001.
The ASIC website lists the following types of companies as being required to lodge financial reports:
- disclosing entities
- public companies
- companies limited by guarantee
- large proprietary companies that are not disclosing entities
- registered, managed investment schemes
- small proprietary companies that are foreign-controlled
- small proprietary companies that have one or more crowd-sourced funding shareholders at any time during the year
- small proprietary companies directed by ASIC to prepare financial reports
- small proprietary companies directed by shareholders to prepare a financial report
- small companies limited by guarantee subject to a member direction under section 294A of the Corporations Act
What makes for a great annual report?
Any annual report must contain, at minimum, the financial and operational reports required by law. However, what distinguishes a great report from an ordinary one is not just what the report says, but also how it’s said.
Annual reports are read by shareholders, current and potential investors, industry analysts, as well as current and future employees (including potential C-suite candidates). Consequently, a great annual report is one that impresses all of those readers, by:
- relating the key organisation’s key accomplishments and challenges in a narrative that flows logically and inspires confidence for the future (regardless of the financials)
- depicting the organisation in the most professional light, through the use of data visualisation and infographics that make the facts and figures lucid and interesting
- showcasing the organisation’s human side — the culture and the people — through photographs, anecdotes and quotes.
With Lime preparing their custom annual reports, our customers ensured their reports achieved all of these goals (and then some) with style.
Why should I choose Lime to prepare my business’s annual report?
Here are just a few of the advantages of working with Lime.
Design Inspire
Marketing design is about — the science and art of visual persuasion. At Lime, we call this Design Inspire: design that inspires consumers to act a certain way, through the skilful use of the elements of communication. Be it an ad, a website, a brochure, or anything else, our experts consciously craft these elements that consumers respond to unconsciously.
Design Inspire is a set of 125 principles that we apply to all our work. Here are just a few:
Layout: As every great speaker will tell you, it isn’t just what you say, but how you say it. Our designers skilfully take care of alignment, balance, proximity, contrast, and hierarchy, to produce communication that pulls in the audience.
Colour: Good colour choice attracts attention, while poor ones easily elude it. A thorough understanding of colour theory and an approach mindful of its culture-specific meanings, allow our work to build compelling brands.
Typography: Typefaces are like clothes for letters. The wrong clothes for your words can be like going to an interview in a swimsuit — it hurts your chances of persuading your audience. Our typography specialists ensure your messages are always dressed for the occasion.
Images: Not every picture speaks a thousand words. Mediocre images are mute, and bad ones are confusing. Well composed images, on the other hand, don’t just speak; they tell stories and create interest.
Production: Every medium, whether in digital or physical format, comes with its own unique production demands, and poor execution can render even the best communication ineffective. From resolutions and grid ratios, to bleeds and additive / subtractive colour models, Lime’s experts are well-versed with the science of web and print production.
Expert writing and editing services
Our experienced writers are well-versed in the art and science of reporting on the successes and challenges faced, in order to reassure, impress and motivate all stakeholders in the organisation.
Attention to detail
Coordinating the flow of information across the different functional areas of your business can be challenging. This is why we don’t impose restrictions on the number of revisions to information in your report. In addition, all work is checked internally by our own project leaders, and the pre-press proof is inspected at 300% magnification, to catch even the smallest flaws. In short, our workflow is calibrated to deliver your content just the way you want it.
Cross-platform ready
Increasingly, stakeholders expect the convenience of digital with all content — including your annual report. Lime’s proven expertise with responsive web development means we can convert your annual report into richly interactive and immersive formats for the web, as well as digital formats such as PDF.
Proudly Australian
Lime has been based in Melbourne, ever since we were established in 2000. We prefer to keep things here in Australia, so we don’t outsource to low-quality overseas contractors — which means professional, reliable, on-time delivery.