Content area
Full text
CAHAN AND ASSOCIATES DESIGNS ANNUAL REPORTS IN WAYS PHOTOGRAPHERS AND CLIENTS WOULD NEVER EXPECT-AND CAN'T HELP BUT LIKE.
THOUGH HE'S BEEN AROUND SINCE 1984, BILL CAHAN, creative director and principal at Cahan and Associates in San Francisco, really put himself on the map in 1995, when he convinced Adaptec, a manufacturer of computer "whatits," that its annual report simply had to be designed in the form of a sci-fi comic book. Since then, Cahan's design firm has garnered countless industry awards for its brochures, catalogues and annual reports, which have taken every form from jigsaw puzzles to photojournalistic essays.
With so many Silicon Valley clients (typically biotech, electronics and pharmaceutical companies), one wonders how Cahan's designers avoid the familiar corporate traps: dull, stodgy, obscure. "A lot of what our clients make is so abstruse, so esoteric, you simply have to find ways of making [an annual report] intelligible-and compelling-to anyone who's going to be reading it," Cahan says. "Clients will sometimes say, 'We want the new, the daring, the outrageous. But what do those concepts actually mean to this client?"
To find out, he asks each client to look at about 50 annual reports. Then he asks, "Which ones say "new" and "daring" to you? Once we understand the mindset," Cahan says, "we can work to bring the client along a little. [We might say], 'Okay, that's new, sure. But let me tell you about something really new.' "
He and his staff of seven designers will then do the reverse: digest the company's progress reports, analyses, fact sheets, brochures-"anything and everything to improve our understanding of the client's business. The idea is to find one or two kernels of information or messages that will make people care about the company and get excited about the product."
Where does photography fit into the Cahan design picture? "Photography is best when you want to drive home the reality of the product or the ultimate beneficiary of the product," Cahan says. "Photography lets you make a strong emotional connection. For instance, in the Coulter Pharmaceutical Annual Report (see photo caption, page 122), you see photographs of people who would have been dead, literally, had they not gotten a certain Coulter therapy. Here's the product and here's...