Following an award win the previous year, this latest edition of IFoA’s digital performance report is an evolution rather than a revolution.

Background

Founded in 2010, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) is the result of the merger of the Institute of Actuaries and the Faculty of Actuaries in Scotland after members of both bodies voted to merge their respective organisations. Actuaries work in a number of different practice areas: life insurance and pensions, finance and investment, enterprise risk management, general insurance, health and care. The IFoA currently regulates and represents over 32,000 members all over the world.

Challenge

An update on the report design we had designed the previous year, our client saw this edition of the report as an evolution rather than a revolution. Last year’s had been well received by members (and the industry as a whole, having been worthy of an award), so this year’s digital performance report would have to feel like a continuation while creating a noticeable enough point of difference, and always keeping in mind the set budget and the technical boundaries of the digital platform chosen for its publication. The digital report would also have to incorporate video interviews with two of the senior leaders at IFoA.

Solution

A strong start to a digital document that reports on a strong year: the opening page energises readers thanks to the motion effect we applied to an infinite swirl of fluid particles, which we used to represent the constant flow of data at the IFoA. Immediately below, interviews with senior leaders filmed by our video production team speak directly to IFoA members for maximum engagement.

Inspired by the previous version of the digital performance report, we added an extra layer of sophistication, being careful not to overcomplicate it but still adapting the design to maximise the functionality available to us as designers, and also the end users. There is a subtlety to the report design.

With no distractions and a clear structure, navigation of the report feels natural, making for a highly intuitive experience.

The treatment of images has also seen a big change – historically the report had relied on a selection of abstract visuals that nod at what the IFoA do; for this edition of the report, we sourced a selection of stock images from a variety of free online libraries to achieve a point of differentiation: the images are still of unquestionable visual and technical quality, and appropriate to use in a document of this kind, but precisely because we sourced them from free image libraries, they’re not widely used in professional websites, surprising the audience with their candour and polished visual style.

With the report targeted towards mobile and laptop consumption, we organised the content in two columns so that they rearrange on a single column for mobile and tablet devices.

The design is imaginative when presenting the key statistics that are the essence of the digital performance report, playing with colour, structure and visual patterns.

Each article is laid out as a bitesize piece, making it easy for readers to focus their attention. These distinct sections also make it easy for the IFoA team to extract them for wider distribution, for example as social media assets.