Every year, the Vice Chancellor for Social Impact, Transformation and Personnel at Stellenbosch University puts together an Annual Report to show their achievements for the year.

From 2023 until now, we have been doing the layout and design of this annual report. Our challenge is to make it visually appealing while keeping it formal (think justified text and very few images). We incorporate statistics where possible and add pull-quotes to keep things interesting. We create the English and Afrikaans layouts.

The copy we receive has raw information with few photos, and we often recommend where we think a photo might work. In the case below, we recommended the use of a choir photo. For the same spread, we redesigned the graph (see mockup).

For the 2023 annual report, we conceptualised the use of a fingerprint motif. It was made up of various colours, thereby symbolising the client’s mission of inclusiveness and diversity.

We used an illustration of a tree for the main design element of the 2024 report. This showed growth and possibility, linking back to the office’s mission to make a difference.

In 2025 the client requested that we play with typography for the cover design. We opted for a text overlay that shows the photo underneath. Further, we made use of various campus photos to bring in a human element.

Want to see more creative Annual Reports that we have done? Have a look at Lalela’s Annual Reports