In 2007, I designed the Annual Report for the Spirit Mountain Community Fund. This was not the first year I had done this job for them, but this time it was a much bigger task than it had ever been before — for both myself and the Community Fund. This owed in part to the fact this version coincided with the Fund’s 10-year anniversary, and because of this they wanted a book that would be eye-catching, attractive and handsomely produced. For the 2007 Annual Report we had access to better paper stocks  that gave the finished book an appealing texture as well as allowing us to print images featuring more detail than we had been allowed in previous versions.

When I met with the Community Fund, they told me that they wanted to use nature as a theme that contributed to the visual look of their report, along with an emphasis on history and its connection to the tribe they worked for today. With this in mind, I added in elements like leaves and branches as decorative materials as well as visual motifs used throughout the book. I also tried to “age” the book a bit by adding in elements like yellowing paper scraps that could be used as captions as well as adding some tear effects to the edge of photos we used to make them look a bit older. I built almost all of the book’s visual effects myself in Adobe Photoshop, and assembled the finished report in Adobe InDesign. A few of the double-page spreads that the book featured can be seen in the images below.