The Lotte Corporation is a huge South Korean multinational. Originally established in Japan in 1948, it set up its Korean headquarters in the late 60s. The corporation has about 90 businesses under its umbrella.
Lotte’s business interests are varied and include manufacturing food; retail; hotels; financial services; industrial chemicals; electronics; IT; construction; publishing; and entertainment. Their 2022 sustainability report works hard to incorporate these diverse interests and succeeds through its use of illustration.
Illustrations are in the Corporate Memphis style, which tends towards the simple representation of human figures and basic colour palettes. In Lotte’s use of Corporate Memphis, we see human figures with tiny heads and no facial features (except in one case), very fine line work, and clothing appropriate (and quickly recognisable) for each character’s role in Lotte’s businesses.
The figures are presented small. Even the largest of them are presented at less than a quarter-page in size. This has the effect of depicting many humans collaborating inside vast structures of text and graphics. This is fitting, given the scale of the Lotte Corporation.
One particularly effective use of the Corporate Memphis figures is Lotte’s occasional use of them without colour. Depicted in fine, grey line work, these figures fill space on a page without dominating it. It’s a great alternative to balancing negative space on each page.
Isometric drawings of buildings that represent their businesses and icons representing various business processes round out a wealth of illustration in this effective report.
