A pioneer in the ‘virtual office’ space, the Australian firm Servcorp provides IT solutions, virtual offices and services for virtual offices. Since its inception in the late 70s, Servcorp has grown from a single facility to 150 offices in 22 countries.
Their 2019 report positions the company as a maverick by using Indian Jones as a source of inspiration. Given the company is Australian, presenting Indiana Jones as a wombat makes perfect sense. Wombat Indiana Jones accompanies the reader for the first section of the report (your on your own for the financials) and interacts with various design elements on the page layout.
The designers draw inspiration not only from Dr. Jones’ iconic outfit but reference specific scenes in the first three films, too. Corporate portraits are illustrated at the same scale as Wombat Indiana Jones and they too, interact with elements of the design. The chairman is portrayed as Dr. Jones’ father (played by Sean Connery in the film) cleverly referencing the chairman’s role as the father of the company as well as a learned man of letters.
The travel montage pioneered by the Indiana Jones films plays a lead role as a design element – the map, the plane, the route marked in a red dotted line, all make an appearance. It’s effective and it binds the first section of the report together as a cohesive whole.
Type treatments come in two main varieties – cutout letters as in Hollywood ransom notes and beautiful, handwritten annotations, using fountain pen. The handwritten notes are particularly nice as again, they tie into the Indiana Jones mythology, and it’s a shame they weren’t used more. The ‘ransom note’ titles are effective, though a little out of place given their crime/noir genre leanings.
Although the photographs have reproduced poorly, this may be an error in file outputting, rather than design. Given how carefully referenced the other visual aspects of the report are, Dr. Jones may well have given the designers the benefit of the doubt.
