The primary goal of this project was to craft a compelling narrative for employees, customers, prospects and partners that showcased the economic and social impact of Elance-oDesk through the powerful stories of our clients and freelancers from around the world.

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.

The primary business output of the impact report was brand awareness and media opportunities to tell our story. This was an in-house project and our primary client, the CEO, was very happy with the result. The report was successful in securing, or being featured in, numerous interviews and articles with large news media outlets. The report also launched with its own landing page and associated social media campaigns to further support its reach and gave us a go to resource for images or sharable graphics for some time.