The brief

To create an authoritative print report for a leading charitable foundation for distribution to world leaders, policy makers and international journalists.

DATA (Debt Aids Trade Africa) is an advocacy organization dedicated to eradicating extreme poverty and AIDS in Africa.

Founded by U2 lead singer Bono, Bobby Shriver and activists from the "Drop the Debt" campaign in 2002, DATA calls on the governments of the world's wealthiest nations to keep their existing commitments to Africa and adopt new trade and aid policies that will help Africans put themselves on the path to long-term prosperity and stability.

What we did

In 2006 DATA approached us to design and produce The DATA Report which is a comprehensive white-paper collating empirical research monitoring the G8 countries' performance in keeping the promises they made to African nations at the 2005 G8 Summit at Gleneagles.

The report measures performance by nation and in aggregate across different development indicators including debt, trade, health, education, water sanitation and governance. The report will be produced annually for the ten year period across which the promises applied.

The design challenge in this project was to create a coherent document which displays some dense and dry content in an accessible manner. The report needed to look inviting and easy to read and digest and yet be a credible report with suitable gravitas to be distributed to a selection of the most influential individuals alive.

This was a challenging design project with an ambitious brief and aggressive deadlines. The full report was 100 pages long in 2006 and nearly 200 pages long in 2007. Summary versions are produced in five languages and distributed globally to a broad audience of leading thinkers and analysts including the G8 leaders themselves.

The 2006 foreword in was written by Nelson Mandela and the 2007 foreword by Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (President of Liberia). Printing is done using paper endorsed by the Forest Stewardship Council and is alcohol and chlorine free in its manufacture.

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