2008 Annual Report
Spirit Mountain Community Fund
When I met with the staff of the Spirit Mountain Community Fund to begin creating their 2008 Annual Report, they had two ideas for how they wanted it to look. First, they had recently visited a local Native American landmark: A series of ancient rock paintings and carvings at Horsethief Butte (one is featured in the picture above). Inspired by the appearance of this ancient artwork, and also by the connection it had to their own tribal past, they wanted to know if I could develop a look for their Annual Report that imitated the petroglyph art they had seen.
Second, they also wanted to develop a brighter, more colorful look for the 2008 Annual Report that would be distinct from the more muted and natural earth tones that were used in the 2007 Annual Report which I had also designed for them. Was there a way that I could combine these two ideas to build an attractive and consistent look for the Community Fund’s new book?
I began by looking at the Horsethief petroglyph art that had inspired my clients, and then building a set of marks featuring local animal life that imitated their appearance. I built a series of logos featuring these marks that could be used throughout the book to mark out different areas: They served as chapter heads, page markers and even as occasional space fillers in sections that ran short on copy. I also made sure to combine my imitation petroglyph marks with some vivid colors, using a bright yellow and a warm magenta as the two primary hues that would provide a color identity for the finished book.
The 2007 Annual Report had featured pages that were shorter and wider; By contrast, the pages in the 2008 Annual report would be tall and narrow. Using a page layout like this allowed me to develop some new ideas for how text and images would work on the page, and lead to my decision to have all photos in the book feature a full bleed to the top of the page.
The Community Fund staff was very pleased with the finished version of the 2008 Annual Report that I presented them, and you can view a few of the double-page spreads that the book featured in the images shown below. Logos and art were produced myself in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop, while the finished book itself was assembled in Adobe InDesign.
