The design challenge was creating the structure and style that would weave together the wide variety of stories, images and data points into unified and memorable editorial experience. The heartfelt customer stories were the story of our business and that needed to be the focus. We chose a B/W documentary approach to our photography for that reason. Photography was the primary image medium and the photo direction was critical in unifying a team of over 15 photographers shooting worldwide in a wide variety of conditions. B/W photography gave us a documentary/journalistic mode that focused on our 2 main subjects, the people and their environs, while presenting them in a way that felt unvarnished, personal and real. B/W also offered an expressive and artistic side with its rich visual tapestry of tones that was great for the city shots and a nice eye rest for the overall rhythm. Lastly, it was key it reducing the noise from many shoots that were done under less than ideal conditions all over the world.
For print specs, we went with Titan Dull for our paper, a nice book paper that our printer recommended which was economical but felt and looked great and supported our unvarnished approach. We went with 3 spot inks (black, cool grey and a warm blue) that led to a nice, soft pearlescence to areas of solid of grey (like the cover headline), gave us the contrast and depth we wanted in our duotone photography treatment and lent a strength and pop to the blue we couldn't have achieved in CMYK.
