Effectiveness Compelling design Great design brings content to life in an engaging way and crafts an excellent user experience by ensuring they can understand the information quickly and easily. Infographics can simplify complex content, typography can emphasize key points, and illustrations and photographs help visualize stories. Key recommendations Group content appropriately to ensure the report unfolds in a logical way. Develop a clear and inspiring company-specific theme to drive the narrative of the report. Develop a design concept that shapes the look and feel of the report and helps amplify the content, theme and messaging. Use design elements such as color, typography, graphics, illustrations, diagrams and white space. Methodology notes Use of the report’s design to amplify the theme and key messages. Scoring is limited for reports without a clear theme. Of the reports we reviewed: Flora Food Group Flora Food Group’s 2024 Annual Report stands out for its exemplary use of design to strengthen both the delivery and reception of its sustainability narrative. The report opens with a compelling, company-specific theme that is woven seamlessly throughout the document, ensuring both an aesthetic appeal and a coherent and engaging structure. At the heart of the report’s framework are the three distinct pillars of Flora Food Group’s sustainability strategy: nourishing food, thriving people and a flourishing planet. These pillars serve as guiding threads and are consistently referenced across all disclosures, reinforcing the central message and the company’s strategic focus. A notable feature is the thoughtful implementation of high-quality design elements that work in harmony to enhance clarity and accessibility. The bold use of color-coding helps to distinguish key sections, while company-specific imagery and custom iconography add visual interest and reinforce brand identity. Carefully chosen font sizes and standardized templates contribute to a clean and intuitive layout, making navigation straightforward for a wide range of audiences. These elements are not used arbitrarily; each serves to amplify the content, highlight core messages and ensure that important information is easily accessible. Collectively, the design choices do more than beautify the report – they create a unified reader experience that reflects Flora Food Group’s values and personality. % follow a clear structure and creative concept that helps elevate their content. Reports from the Americas, which typically are stand-alone sustainability reports, tend to have stronger design elements compared to reports from APAC and EMEA. They reflect a wider mix of reporting approaches and align more often with mandatory requirements, which limits the use of compelling design elements. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 6 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 6