Annual reports of a particular industry tend to have a ‘family’ appearance. Supermarket chains, travel companies, FMCG companies and the fashion industry generally produce colourful reports. The 2017 report of one of the world’s largest manufacturers and retailers of private label apparel, Fast Retailing, is no exception.
Flipping the cover page reveals the philosophy of the company as well as its Japanese roots. The CEOs message is brief and is followed by several pages consisting of his insights, which is a rather uncommon feature. The geographical market profile is well presented with the use of colourful and industry specific graphs.
A snapshot of business performance reveals a plethora of information, followed by several pages of infographics of KPIs displayed through graphs which are large and easy to absorb.
The rest of the report concisely describes various aspects of the business such as branding, planning, production, geographical markets and sustainability. Text is limited while photographs are large and attractive. The sustainability pages use tasteful infographics against appropriate blue and green backgrounds.
This report demonstrates how generous use of infographics and vibrant photographs can be balanced with limited text to create a very readable and pleasing document which reflects the industry.
