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🚨 SOUND THE ALARMS 🚨

Today’s the day. We’re hitting you with the first nineteen eighty four special of the year, and there’s no better place to start than with impact reporting.

Impact reports are an amazing tool for any purpose-driven, sustainable or regenerative business, so we wanted to offer a range of different resources on arguably the best way to narrate a better business's impact journey.

🔍 Sustainability fact of the week: Despite 90% of executives thinking sustainability is an important topic, there’s a severe lack of any implementation, as only 60% of companies actually have a sustainability strategy in place.

Don’t you think that’s interesting considering 1 in 3 consumers stopped purchasing from unsustainable businesses since the COVID-19 pandemic? 🤷

Our ultimate guide to impact reporting

Sustainability reports, ESG reports, impact reports, where does a business even begin? In a world where the role of business is shifting for the good of people and planet, it's becoming ever more important for businesses to measure, declare, and report their impact. In a new blog by Josh, Avery & Brown's Ultimate Guide to Impact Reporting is here to give you the lowdown on impact reporting and why it’s relevant now more than ever.

If you already signed on last month, you’ll know all about Russ’ free email course, ‘9 Top Tips for Effective Impact Reporting’. If you missed it the first time, you’ll be glad to know that as of today, the entire course is available on our site, additional videos and PDF also included.

Did you know that impact reporting is a service too? Like any collateral, someone has to plan, design, and write it to pull all that impact goodness together; so it’s a great new area of opportunity for designers, copywriters, and marketers to get stuck into. We launched our own impact reporting service earlier this year, and today marks the launch of our shiny new impact reporting landing page. Why not take a look to see an overview of our process?

If you’re looking for some really good impact reports out there that ooze personality and cohesive data visualisation, head over to The Impact Reporting Archive. This website specialises in storing and showcasing impact reports from businesses all over the world and is constantly receiving new uploads. You can even spot ours there too!

The key to good impact report design

A key element of designing any impact report is bringing your data to life. If you need some design inspiration for your complex data, check out Visual Capitalist. The graphics here are a great source of inspiration for some clever data visualisation.

For even more resources to help make impactful infographics, take a look at Information is Beautiful. This site showcases ways simple spreadsheets can become so much more.

Now, impact reports can come in all shapes and sizes depending on the business and the brand. These 50 awesomely creative report designs showcase just how crazy you can get with your collateral. Maybe a few in here could spark some inspiration on captivating your intended viewer?

But, oh dear. You’ve sat down with the laptop open ready to start planning your impact report, but now you’ve realised something; you have no graphic designer.

Designers are important (and that’s why at Avery & Brown we have 3 of them), but the good news is it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have one on hand. There are tons of great resources out there that can offer all sorts of pre-existing templates that’d work great for an impact report. Take a look at GraphicRiver or Adobe Stock as some examples.

The issue of ‘overselling’ sustainability

If we’re going to make real progress, is relying on sustainable reporting and investing really going to cut it? In this deep dive, Timberland’s former COO explores why we need to make changes in regulations, investment incentives, and mindsets on top of evolving our reporting practices.

Impact reporting isn’t just a good look for your business, it’s also an opportunity to inspire others too. Back in 2005, the UN Environment Programme went the whole hog and published this extensive guide on communicating sustainability, offering some great insight on producing effective public campaigns.

A good one for the people who like things all in one place. The EU have announced that ESG reports will be published on a single website by 2027. Soon it’s going to be much easier to find and compare investment products and companies.

In each issue of nineteen eighty four, we feature a different Certified B Corporation, to celebrate the brands which are working hard to create a better business world. To learn more about B Corps, click here.

Our featured B Corp this week is…

Ticket Tailor

It only seems right that in the impact reporting special, we feature a B Corp with a top notch impact report.

Ticket Tailor offer a simple, affordable way for creators to sell tickets; and are the first ticketing platform to reach B Corp status.

Ticket Tailor’s newest impact report is an awesome example of when design, data visualisation, and sustainable practices combine into one big beautiful document.

Have you enjoyed this issue of nineteen eighty four? Let us know your feedback by dropping us a line at [email protected]!