StruckAxiom

In a marketing world where information clutter is pervasive and big budgets often rule (despite what you’ve heard about “free” social media), standing out from the crowd is as challenging as ever.

Recently, StruckAxiom was honored to help the Forest Park Conservancy (FPC) with an annual communications challenge.

At 5000+ Acres, Forest Park is the crown jewel of Portland’s public park system and one of the largest natural areas within the boundaries of any city in the entire world (period). The FPC protects and fosters the ecological health of this treasure. Each year the FPC, like many non-profits, publishes and distributes its annual report to donors. These reports communicate key accomplishments; demonstrate how investments from donors were put to wise use and work to create dialogue regarding financial support needed in the time ahead. This year, StruckAxiom designed the FPC report.

The Challenges

• Oftentimes annual reports are plain booklets. While such a format serves its purpose, they can easily be lost in the vast sea of other mail arriving during the busy end of year time period.
• At the same time, FPC must also be hyper conscious of being good stewards of their budget (as well as the Forest). They strive to ensure every dollar works as hard as possible to make a positive, lasting difference in the park. Therefore, some typical solutions we would have dreamed up (e.g. way cool die cuts, stylish stitching, full color ink and multiple paper types) were out the window.

The Craft

• Our design team just had to give this some world-class love in terms of image “WOW-ness”, most excellent typographical treatment, and all other elements of well-crafted design.

The Smarts

We also wanted to make it just a little greater. So, we turned the typical annual report on its head (and back) …

• We were inspired by the trails of Forest Park themselves; the discovery, fun and adventure they offer.
• This got us thinking about maps, and how fun they can be to unfold, discover and plan Forest Park adventures.
• We made the report work that way. Every fold unveils a new bit of information about the work of the conservancy and the park, and keeps readers moving through them as if navigating Forest Park’s trails themselves.
• This invites a different and more dynamic level of interaction and engagement with the material (vs. simply flipping through the pages of a book).
• The icing on the cake of sweet annual report ideas came last … our own Scott Sorenson dreamed up the idea of offering a poster designed by StruckAxiom and we worked to print it on the back side of the report. The poster features the photography of the Park itself from Bruce MacGregor.
• This not only delivers surprise and delight, it means all the valuable paper resources are reusable in an inventive and fun way (Bonus!).

We hope these efforts help make Forest Park just a little Greater Than it was before.

The poster found on the back of the report (seen here), doubles as a desktop background.

FPC is distributing an electronic version of the report as well as the background here and through their social channels (Facebook and Twitter).

If you’re inspired to do something great, please show your support by liking and following our friends at FPC … they’re awesome!